Trump’s costly and disruptive policies

Bob Sheak, March 26, 2025

Trump’s anti-democratic response to losing the 2020 presidential election

Trump has long been an authoritarian. Anne Gearan and Josh Dawsey report that “Trump has been fixated on overturning the [2020] election for weeks, making hundreds of calls to allies, lawyers, state legislators, governors and other officials and regularly huddling with outside lawyers Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and others” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-election-capitol-building).

According to The January 6 Report of The House January 6th Committee,

“the Trump complaint about a rigged election involved ‘62 separate lawsuits between November 4, 2020 and January 6, 2021, calling into question or seeking to overturn the elections results. Out of 62 cases, only one case results in victory for the President Trump or his allies, which affected relatively few votes, did not vindicate any underlying claims of fraud, and would not have changed the outcome in Pennsylvania” (p. 210).

Making no headway in the courts, Trump called for his followers to gather at the Capitol to stop the presidential certification process.

Gearan and Dawsey continue.

Trump fed “his base through twitter that the election was rigged against him, even before he lost the election on November 3. He asked his right-wing supporters to come to Washington for a rally on December 6, when a joint-session of Congress was convening to take the final step to sanctify Biden’s victory.” It was at this rally, including some 30,000 people, that Trump told the crowd to march to the US Capitol building.

The costs of the Jan.6 riots

Trump’s crowd broke into a riot not long after getting to the Capitol. Emily Cochrane and Luke Broadwater report on the costs of the January 6 attacks on the Capitol (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/us/politics/capitol-riot-damage.html).

“The top operations and maintenance official of the United States Capitol told lawmakers on Wednesday that the costs of the Jan. 6 attack will exceed $30 million, as his office works to provide mental health services, increase security and repair historical statues and other art damaged in the riot.”

They also write: “Far more difficult to ascertain is the psychological burden on the hundreds of Capitol Hill staff members, many of whom sheltered in place as the mob broke through doors and windows and ransacked the building.

“…counseling and consultation services in 2021 would increase by 65 percent over 2020 and by 200 percent as compared to more typical recent years,”

Trump embraces the rioters

Immediately after the Jan. 6 attack, Trump sought to distance himself from the attack, saying those who broke the law should be held accountable. But over the next few years, a new narrative emerged, and Trump soon began openly signaling his support for Jan. 6 rioters, calling them ‘hostages.’” (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/13/us/politics/trump-jan-6.html).

Trump in the White House again – the pardons

One of Trump’s first acts after barley winning the 2024 presidential election with the help of voter suppression and with less than 50 percent of the popular vote was to pardon over 1,500+ prisoners who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, claiming falsely that they had acted peacefully and that any violence was carried out by left-wing provocateurs.

Ryan J. Reilly refers to some of the evidence (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-set-pardon-defendants-stormed-capitol-jan-6-2021-rcna187735). Here’s some of what he writes.

“Trump commuted the sentences of individuals associated with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were convicted of seditious conspiracy. He then issued ‘a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021’ a category that included people who assaulted law enforcement officers.”

Reilly quotes Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who was speaker of the House during the attack.

“‘It is shameful that the President has decided to make one of his top priorities the abandonment and betrayal of police officers who put their lives on the line to stop an attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of power,’ she said in a statement. ‘Despite the President’s decision, we must always remember the extraordinary courage and valor of the law enforcement heroes who stood in the breach and ensured that democracy survived on that dark day.’”

Now, as President again, Trump wants to compensate the rioters

Martha McHardy reports on Trump’s comments on March 26, 2025 to create a “compensation fund” for Jan.6 rioters (https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-january-6-riot-compensation-2050582).

Efforts to reduce the size and impact of government

At the same time, Trump, his partner Elon Musk. Along with DOGE (Musk’s young team, The Department of Government Efficiency) are rampaging through agencies in the federal government with the alleged goals of ridding agencies of waste and fraud and to reducing the national debt. But this goal of reducing the national debt is unachievable as long as they don’t increase taxes on the rich. And they are doing just the opposite, by planning to reduce such taxes. The implicit rationale is called “trickle-down economics” in which government spending and regulation are reduced, while big corporations are supposed to fill the subsequent employment gap.

Widespread protests and court actions have forced the Trump government to order some federal workers to return to their offices. However, as Shannon Bond and Jena McLaughlin report for NPR, workers are finding “shortages of desks, Wi-Fi and toilet paper” (https://www.npr.org/2025/03/26/nx-s1-5338945/federal-workers-return-to-office-chaos).

“Earlier this month, a Department of Agriculture employee who works remotely was given a list of possible locations for their upcoming mandatory return to office. One location was described as a ‘storage unit.’”

“Confused, the employee drove to the address, which turned out to be, in fact, a storage facility. When the employee asked the facility’s owner why it might show up on a list of federal office spaces, the owner laughed and told the employee that the federal government does rent a unit there — to store a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service boat. It doesn’t have heat, windows or power.

“The USDA employee notified their supervisor, but hasn’t heard back. NPR spoke to 27 current employees at more than a dozen federal agencies for this story. All of them requested their names be withheld for fear of reprisal from the Trump administration for speaking out.

“Federal workers have been ordered back into offices only to face shortages of desks, computer monitors, parking and even toilet paper. Others are still waiting to find out if they will be assigned to a building near where they live or asked to relocate across the country in the coming weeks.

“Some civil servants say the return-to-office mandate feels like an indirect way to get them to quit, and flies in the face of a years-long push by the federal government, predating the COVID pandemic, to encourage teleworking.”

“Cumulatively, the rush to bring workers into federal offices is taking a toll across the country, federal employees told NPR, with few apparent benefits for efficiency, cost savings or productivity.”

“Many employees at agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and the Bureau of Land Management have turned up at offices that don’t seem equipped for the influx, they told NPR.”

The great economy will have to wait after all

Once in office, Trump reversed his promises of a great economy. He admitted that the problem was more difficult to solve than he anticipated and that it would take time to solve the inflation and other economic problems that beset the country.

But is the wait worth it?

Ben Casselman, writer for the New York Times, disputes the views of Trump and his administrators who claims that any costs of a bad economy will in time be worth it (https://nytimes.com/2025/03/18/business/economy/trump-recession-tariffs-inflation.html).

For example, “Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has said Mr. Trump’s policies are ‘worth it’ even if they cause a recession. Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, has said the economy may need a ‘detox period’ after becoming dependent on government spending. And Mr. Trump has said there will be a ‘period of transition’ as his policies take effect.”

Casselman continues. “Such comments may partly reflect an effort to align political statements with economic reality. Mr. Trump promised to end inflation ‘starting on Day 1’ and declared, in his inaugural address, that ‘the golden age of America begins right now.’

“Instead, inflation has remained stubborn, and while Mr. Trump has been in office less than two months, economists warn that his tariffs are likely to make it worse. Measures of consumer and business confidence have plummeted and stock prices have tumbled, attributable in large part to Mr. Trump’s policies and the uncertainty they have caused.”

Trump’s anti-worker policies and their effects

Bob Sheak, March 15, 2025

Trump’s views on workers are not new

Lawrence Wittner, Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany who has written extensively on peace movements, foreign policy, and economic inequality, considers Trump’s record on American workers (https://commondreams.org/opinion/trump-working-class). The title of his article, published on May 21, 2024, says it all: “Trump Didn’t Lift Up the Working Class. He Stepped on Its Neck.” Here’s some of what he writes.

“Although Donald Trump, as president, proclaimed in his 2020 State of the Union address that he had produced a “blue-collar boom” in workers’ wages, the reality was quite different. Using his control of the executive branch of the U.S. government, Trump repeatedly undermined the wages of American workers by blocking raises and imposing wage reductions.

“Only the preceding year, Trump derailed vital wage legislation. In July 2019―with the pathetically low federal minimum wage stuck at $7.25 per hour for a decade and some 13 million workers holding two or more jobs to support their families―the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed the Raise the Wage Act. If enacted, the legislation would have gradually increased the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour over a six-year period. But, instead of supporting the legislation or proposing an alternative, the Trump White House announced that, if the Senate passed the House bill, Trump would veto it.

“Consequently, the measure died in the Republican-controlled Senate. According to the AFL-CIO, the legislation would have raised the pay of 40 million American workers.

Wittner continues.

Also in 2019, “Trump’s Department of Labor succeeded in rolling back planned wage increases for millions of workers by restricting eligibility for overtime pay. In 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, the Labor Department had issued a rule substantially raising the income level below which workers were paid time and a half for work done beyond 40 hours per week. But the Trump Labor Department, seizing on a delay in implementation occasioned by a judicial decision, lowered the level by more than $20,000, thus depriving 8.2 million American workers of the right to overtime pay secured under Obama.

“In August 2018, Trump canceled a scheduled 2 percent pay raise for millions of civilian federal employees, leading to criticism even from some Republicans. This action, plus other administration assaults on the rights of public employees, led to a massive flight of workers from government service. By the fall of 2019, there were 45,000 vacancies in the Department of Veterans Affairs alone. To fill these vacancies, the Trump administration hired large numbers of temp workers at low wages and with minimal benefits.

“Yet another administration policy that undercut workers’ wages emerged with the Trump Labor Department’s issuance of a “joint-employer” rule. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 had been fashioned to ensure that businesses using staffing companies or subcontractors would be accountable for complying with basic workplace protections. Even so, the Trump administration’s joint-employer rule substantially limited liability for wage and hour violations, thereby making it harder for workers to hold all parties accountable. As a result, U.S. workers lost an estimated $1 billion annually thanks to subcontracting or wage theft by employers.

“Of course, not all Trump administration attempts at holding down wages succeeded. In 2017, the Trump Labor Department proposed that employers could simply pocket workers’ tips, as long as the workers were paid the minimum wage. Economists estimated that this policy would lead to the loss of $5.8 billion per year in tips for workers, 80 percent of whom were women. But after the discovery that Trump’s Secretary of Labor had gone to great lengths to hide his department’s findings about how harmful the new policy would be, Congress stepped in and amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to prohibit employers from seizing the tips of their employees.

“Another Trump administration failure occurred in connection with reducing the wages of farmworkers, some of the most exploited, lowest-paid workers in the United States. In mid-2019, the Labor Department proposed a new regulation that would change the rules of the H-2A visa program, used by agricultural employers to hire migrant farmworkers for seasonal work―for example, by President Trump’s wineries. As one of the rules changes would lower wage rates for H-2A farmworkers and, consequently, for their U.S. counterparts, the United Farm Workers challenged it in federal court and, ultimately, prevailed.”

Ten of Trump’s more recent, pre-reelection, anti-worker statements

Steven Greenhouse, a journalist and author focusing on labor and the workplace,
delves into this issue (https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/23/trumpanti-worker-union-statements).

Greenhouse writes, “Many people failed to realize that Donald Trump has a long, ugly history of making anti-worker and anti-union statements. He has at times insulted workers, saying their wages are too high, saying their work is so easy that a child can do it.” He also “sought to sabotage labor by saying union members shouldn’t pay their dues and successful union leaders should be fired.”

Greenhouse identifies “Trump’s 10 most shocking anti-worker and anti-union statements.” Here are a few examples. (1) “Trump actually said that the wages of US workers are ‘too high’…even though corporate profits and the stock market were booming at the time.” (2) “Trump praised the idea of firing workers who are on strike, even though that is illegal under federal law.” (3) “Trump insulted the nation’s factory workers by saying their jobs are such a cinch that children can do them. By saying that, he showed he has very little understanding of blue-collar jobs and how hard, exhausting and sometimes dangerous they are.” (4) “Before he became president, he was notorious for paying construction contractors and workers late and for refusing to pay them the amount he had promised to pay; sometimes he would pay tens of thousands of dollars less than he was contracted to pay. Hundreds of contractors and workers had sued Trump after he failed to pay them or after he insisted on paying them far less than what the contract called for.”

A Union documents Trump’s Anti-Worker Record

CWA [Communication Workers of America] also looks at Trump’s anti-worker record (https://cwa-union.org/trumps-anti-worker-record).

The union makes this point: “At every turn Donald Trump has made increasing the power of corporations over working people his top priority. The list of the damage done to working people by the Trump Administration is long.” Here are a few examples.

“Trump packed the courts with anti-labor judges who have made the entire public sector ‘right to work for less’ in an attempt to financially weaken unions by increasing the number of freeloaders.

“Trump stacked the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union appointees who side with employers in contract disputes and support companies who delay and stall union elections, misclassify workers to take away their freedom to join a union, and silence workers.

“Trump made it easier for employers to fire or penalize workers who speak up for better pay and working conditions or exercise the right to strike.

“Trump changed the rules about who qualifies for overtime pay, making more than 8 million workers ineligible and costing them over $1 billion per year in lost wages.

“Trump reduced the number of OSHA inspectors so that there are now fewer than at any time in history, and weakened penalties for companies that fail to report violations.”

Trump rips up the Government’s agreement with its workers

Harold Meyerson, editor at large of The American Prospect, considers some of the actions taken by Trump and his administration, plus Musk, on government workers
(https://prospect.org/labor/2025-03-10-trump-rips-up-governments-agreement-with-workers).

“Airport security screeners had a contract, signed just last year. On Friday [March 7, 2025], Trump trashed it.” “…Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, told the roughly 45,000 airport security screeners (of both passengers and their luggage) who work for the Transportation Security Administration that it would no longer honor its contract with their union, which the government signed last year and was to be in effect until 2031. That contract gave the nation’s airport screeners the right to parental, sick, and bereavement leave, and also raised their wages to levels comparable to the wages of other federal employees with similar jobs.

Meyerson continues. “One of the ostensible reasons Homeland Security gave for its going back on its word is that the 193 security screeners are on leave to the union to represent the screeners when they have issues on the job. The vast majority of those union reps work in the field, covering the 430 U.S. airports where federal screeners are employed. Somehow, having 193 worker representatives covering work issues at 430 vitally important worksites doesn’t strike me as excessive, much less grounds for unilaterally abrogating a contract that the government is legally obligated to honor.”

There is more.

“There are two regulatory bodies charged with adjudicating disputes between federal employees and the government: the Federal Labor Relations Authority and the Merit Systems Protection Board. Not coincidentally, however, Trump has fired Democratic members of both those boards, effectively leaving them incapable of ruling on any cases brought before them. These boards, like the National Labor Relations Board, were established by Congress to have members serving for fixed terms who can’t be terminated mid-term by a president save for misconduct, which hasn’t been alleged in any such Trump firings. For that reason, one federal district judge temporarily reinstated one such member earlier last week, just as another reinstated Gwynne Wilcox, an NLRB member whom Trump had fired, to her seat on that board.”

Meyerson adds, “Today, the rate of unionization is so low—just below 10 percent among all workers and just below 6 percent among private-sector workers—that there’s not much room for it to descend any lower. Ironically, unions’ approval rating, at a little more than 70 percent, hasn’t been this high since the 1960s, and towers above the approval ratings of corporations, the government, and Donald Trump. Employers’ determination to crush unionization drives, however, is also at a near all-time high, with Amazon and other companies now in court contesting the constitutionality of the 90-year-old National Labor Relations Act.”

Bernie Sanders on pending legislation that cuts or eliminates programs that address the needs of workers

The CR [continuing resolution] Would Cut Taxes for Billionaires and Slash Funding for the Working Class

Bernie Sanders, Counter Punch, March 14, 2025
(https://counterpunch.org/2025/03/14/the-cr-would-cut-taxes-for-billionaires-and-slash-funding-for-the-working-class). Here’s some of what Sanders writes.

“Today, at a time when we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of this country, 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck.”

“So given that reality, what does this bill do? The bill written by right-wing extremists in the House of Representatives without any bipartisan discussion at all.

“What does this bill do? Well, let me count the ways that it makes their financial struggles of working people even more difficult than they are today. And it does all of that to lay the groundwork for massive tax breaks for Elon Musk and the billionaire class.”

Here are a few of Sanders’ examples.

“…some 22% of seniors in this country are trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less. Half of our seniors are trying to survive on $30,000 or less. So what does the Trump/Musk administration do to address the terrible economic pressures on seniors all over America? Well, they have a brilliant idea: they illegally fire thousands of workers at the Social Security Administration, with plans to cut that staff in half.”

“In America today, 30,000 people die each year waiting to receive their Social Security disability benefits because of a grossly understaffed and under-resourced Social Security Administration.”

“When you have the President lying about millions of people who are 150 or 200 years of age receiving Social Security benefits – a total lie – everybody should understand what’s going on. Trump and Musk are laying the groundwork for the dismantling of the most successful federal program in history, a program that keeps over 27 million Americans out of poverty. And, by the way, over 99% of the more than 70 million Social Security checks that go out each month are going to people who earned those benefits.”

The continuing resolution passed in the House is also “an attack on the veterans of our nation – the men and women who put their lives on the line defending our country.

“While we made some progress under the Biden administration in improving veterans’ health care, the truth is that the VA has remained significantly understaffed. In the fourth quarter of 2024, there were 36,000 vacancies at the VA.

“We needed 2,400 more doctors, 6,300 more registered nurses, 3,400 more schedulers, 1,800 more social workers, and 1,200 more custodians. So what has the “Trump administration and Mr. Musk done to address this very serious workforce shortage?

“Their answer is that they are threatening to dismantle the VA by firing 83,000 employees. In other words, you have a shortage today, and their solution to the shortage is to fire 83,000 workers.

“Not only does the CR do nothing to stop that, but it cuts more than $20 billion in funding needed to provide care for veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances next year.”

“Just the other day, they fired half of the staff at the Department of Education. That means that it will be far harder to administer the Title I program that helps 26 million low-income kids get the education they need and pays the salaries of some 180,000 public school teachers throughout the country.”

“Well, at a time when our primary health care system is completely broken, when we don’t have enough doctors or nurses or mental health counselors, this proposal cuts community health center funding by 3.2%, cuts the National Health Service Corps by over 5% and cuts funding for Teaching Health Centers — a program which helps train doctors in rural and underserved areas — by almost 13%.
In the midst of a horrific primary health care crisis in Vermont and all over rural America, this proposal will make it that much harder for people to get the health care they desperately need.”

“But it’s not just health care. Everyone in this country from Vermont to Los Angeles understands we have a major housing crisis. And it’s not just all the homelessness we are seeing. Over 20 million of our people spend more than 50% of their limited income on housing.

“How in God’s name do you pay for anything else? How do you buy food? How do you take care of health care if you’re spending 50% or more for your housing.

So how does this CR address the housing crisis? It cuts rental assistance for low-income families in America by $700 million, which could lead to more than 32,000 families in our country being evicted from their homes. Well, that is a heck of a solution to the housing crisis.”

“And on top of all this, the administration is already indicating that they will simply ignore the provisions of the spending bill they don’t like.”

“And let’s be clear: the House CR and the Trump administration are doing everything they can to lay the groundwork for more tax breaks for billionaires paid for by massive cuts to Medicaid, nutrition assistance, housing and education.

“So you’re looking at a 1-2 punch: a very bad CR and then a reconciliation bill coming down which will be the final kick in the teeth for the American people.

“This legislation that the Republicans are working on, the reconciliation bill, will cut taxes for billionaires and the top 1% by $1.1 trillion over the next decade.”

“According to a recent study, if all of Trump’s so-called ‘America First’ policies are enacted, the bottom 95% of Americans will see their taxes go up, while the richest 5% in our country will see their taxes go down. Way down.

The reconciliation bill which Republicans are working on right now “would also cut Medicaid by $880 billion.

“Tax breaks for billionaires. Throwing low-income kids off health care. Decimating nursing homes all over America, because nursing homes receive two-thirds of their funding from Medicaid. Making it harder for community health centers to survive, who provide health care to 32 million Americans because 43% of their revenue comes from Medicaid.

Further, the reconciliation bill proposes to cut $230 billion from nutrition. Today, nearly one out of five children in America rely on federal nutrition programs to keep them from going hungry.

There is no world, no universe, no religion that would not believe that that is grossly immoral and unacceptable. You don’t give tax breaks to the rich and take food away from hungry children.

The firing of thousands of government workers

Chris Walker reports in an article for Truthout on March 13, 2025 on how “Trump Baselessly Suggests Fired Federal Workers Were Incompetent at Their Jobs”
(https://truthout.org/articles/trump-baselessly-suggests-fired-federal-workers-were-incompetent-at-their-jobs). Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles.

Walker writes, “Contrary to the administration’s view, ‘a multi-year survey finds that those working at federal jobs tend to be among the hardest working in the country.

“Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, President Donald Trump expressed little remorse over his administration’s firing of thousands of government workers through Elon Musk’s so-called ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE), baselessly suggesting that the people who have been fired thus far were incompetent at their jobs.

“Trump offered no evidence to back up his claims. The president’s words contradict what data about federal workers has shown — that they are oftentimes more productive than their private sector counterparts.”

Evidence belies what Trump says.

“According to data recently examined by The Washington Post, federal workers, on average, are much more hardworking than the president gives them credit for.

“The Post examined data from the American Community Survey, which looked at 13 million workers’ habits over the past decade and found that federal workers are more productive than any other class of worker.

“The survey then broke down different types of federal workers, and still found that those working in the public sector tended to work beyond the typical 40-hour work week.

“Workers within the armed services worked 48.4 hours per week, the survey found, while postal service workers performed around 41.6 hours per week. All other civil servants worked the same amount, 41.6 hours weekly.”

“The survey also found that a higher proportion of federal workers tended to work at least 40 hours per week. Among those in the military, 94 percent worked that long or longer; among postal workers, the rate was over 87 percent, and among all other federal workers, it was over 91 percent, well above the 74.4 percent of private sector workers who tended to work over a 40-hour week.”

Mass Firings of Federal Workers Were Done Illegally, Two Judges Rule

Anita Hamilton considers this development in an article for Barron’s, March 14, 2025
(https://barrons.com/articles/federal-workers-reinstate-court-california-ruling-40c2b920).

“Most federal workers who lost their jobs as part of the Trump administration’s move to shrink the federal workforce are poised to get rehired. On Thursday, two federal judges ruled that the mass firings were conducted illegally and workers must be reinstated.

“The orders affect employees at nearly 20 agencies, comprising the vast majority of the 30,000 workers still in their probationary periods who were dismissed in February.

“The first ruling, from Judge William Alsup in Northern California district court, found that the firings at six agencies—including the Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs departments—were illegal because the Office of Personnel Management didn’t have the authority to direct them.

“In the second ruling, which came late Thursday night, Judge James Bredar of Maryland district court said layoffs of probationary workers across 18 agencies were conducted without proper notice. ‘There were no individualized assessments of employees. They were all just fired. Collectively,’ Bredar wrote in a memorandum accompanying his temporary restraining order.

“These big government layoffs were actually ‘Reductions in Force’ or ‘RIFs.’ And, because they were ‘RIFs,’ they had to be preceded by notice to the state that would be impacted,” he wrote.

“Deadlines for reinstating workers are either immediate in the Northern California court ruling or by March 17 in the Maryland court ruling. The rulings are preliminary and could change once a final decision is made. Both judges were appointed by Democratic presidents: Barack Obama appointed Bredar and Bill Clinton appointed Alsup.”

“Previous efforts have had mixed results, with most reinstatements only temporary. Thousands of Department of Agriculture workers terminated in February were reinstated March 12 after they were granted a 45-day stay by the federal agency that reviews employee complaints. They will receive all back pay, and the department “will work quickly to develop a phased plan for return-to-duty,” according to a USDA statement.”

“There has been an onslaught of lawsuits pushing back on Trump’s executive actions, with more than 100 filed since Inauguration Day. On Thursday, 21 attorneys general—most from the same states that filed suit over probationary worker firings—filed a new suit over mass firings at the Education Department.”

Trump Set to Whack US Working Class With Historic $2,000 Tax Hike

Dean Baker, co-founder and the senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), considers another aspect of Trump’s actions related to taxes and workers (https://commondreams.org/opinion/trump-tax-hike-working-class). The article was published on March 4.

“The waiting is almost over, Donald Trump is about to hit America’s workers with the largest tax increase they have ever seen. Trump’s taxes on imports (tariffs) from Canada, Mexico, and China will cost people in the United States somewhere around $260 billion a year or around $2,000 a household.

“This is far larger than any tax increase we’ve seen in the last half-century, and unlike tax increases put in place by Clinton and Obama, it will primarily hit low and middle-income households.”

Trump Is Sending the Economy in the Wrong Direction

Christian E. Weller and Emily Gee report on this in an article for the American Progress, March 9. 2025 (https://americanprogress.org/article/trump-is-sending-the-economy-in-the-wrong-direction).

“The Trump administration appears to be sending the U.S. economy into a period of slower growth and higher inflation. In the past few weeks, the administration enacted steep tariffs on a wide range of imports from America’s top trading partners and threatened more; has laid off tens of thousands of federal government workers; and has frozen payments already appropriated by Congress for farms, Head Start facilities, economic development programs, and more.

“The administration’s sudden moves have raised uncertainty about what will happen next. What programs will they cut—and by how much? What regulations will the administration enforce or roll back? Will critical government services that help everyday Americans cease to function? The Economic Policy Uncertainty Index—maintained by researchers at Stanford, the University of Chicago, and Northwestern University—was 161.9 percent higher in February 2025 than a year earlier. Massive uncertainty makes it harder for households and businesses to plan, invest, and spend. Put differently, even President Donald Trump’s threats to further undermine Americans’ economic security can hurt both economic growth and the stock market.

“Over Trump’s first two months in office, some aspects of the economic outlook for typical Americans have become clearer, even as policy uncertainty escalates. At the urging of President Trump, Congress approved plans to make deep cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs to fund tax giveaways for wealthy households. And, over the past few weeks—amid the chaos of federal funding freezes and layoffs—the stock market has become more volatile, directly impacting the savings of millions of American households.”

Trump’s tariffs

Weller and Gee continue. “The Trump administration’s tariffs on Mexico and Canada are expected to put upward pressure on prices and sticky inflation. The 25 percent taxes on goods coming from the United States’ biggest trade partners will raise costs for American businesses and households. Production costs will rise as firms pay more for energy, agricultural products, and intermediate goods such as car parts.

“American consumers pay for higher tariffs—not foreign countries, as Trump has claimed. Indeed, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee—which makes interest rate decisions—observed in January that “firms would attempt to pass on to consumers higher input costs arising from potential tariffs.” Some major retail chains have already said they are poised to hike prices, passing on all or some of these higher costs to American consumers.”

A recession?

“The Conference Board’s U.S. Consumer Confidence measure—a prominent indicator of consumers’ outlook for the economy—dropped “sharply” in February, falling “below the threshold of 80 that usually signals a recession ahead.”

“Conference Board senior economist Stephanie Guichard noted that “comments on the current Administration and its policies dominated the responses” in the survey.
Consumer confidence is not just about vibes, to use recent vernacular. Consumer confidence has fallen substantially in 2025. The University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment stood at 64.7 in February 2025, the lowest reading of the composite index since November 2023. Consumer sentiment dropped 12.6 percent from December 2024—the index’s last peak—to February 2025, largely driven by consumer expectations of tariff-induced price increases.”

The labor market is softening

Weller and Gee: “The U.S. economy added 151,000 jobs in February, marking the 50th consecutive month of job growth. While the overall unemployment rate remains low by historical standards—at 4.1 percent—it increased for white men; for workers without a high school diploma; and for those with a college degree. The number of people who worked part time because their hours were reduced or they were unable to find full-time work jumped by 460,000 in February. These data points were consistent with other signals of a weakening labor market with less favorable conditions for workers. For example, the labor-leverage ratio—a measure of quits to layoffs and an indicator of workers’ ability to secure better jobs—has been trending down.”

“While it is still too early for the full effect of federal layoffs to show up in employment data, unemployment claims rose nationally and were up sharply in the District of Columbia in late February.”

“A volatile policy landscape can be a harsh climate for business, making it difficult for companies to forecast returns on investment and assume contracts will be fulfilled. Such uncertainty has increased since Trump was elected in November 2024. As one measure, the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index stood at 234 in February 2025, its highest reading since December 2020. This newly, highly unstable and uncertain policy environment is bad for business. Periods with above average increases in policy uncertainty have also been associated with slower industrial production growth—a reflection of less investment and other economic activity.”

Concluding thoughts

Donald Trump and his close adviser, Elon Musk, want to transform the federal government from one that reflects the Constitution and the law to one that they can lawlessly dominate. The largescale firing of government workers is one example of how they hope to accomplish this. If they are successful, the federal workforce would become smaller than it is, workers would have little security, and loyalty to Trump and Musk would become essential for jobholders. We would be left with an increasingly privatized workforce, lower wages and benefits, the loss or diminution of services, higher levels of inequality, and the demise of constitutional restraints on Trump’s power.

Trump’s subversion of Social Security

Bob Sheak, March 8, 2025

The Lies

Convicted felon Trump and, in practice, his co-president Elon Musk are engaging in efforts to radically transform the federal government, with the support of billionaires, the Republican Party, and his increasingly shaky “base” of millions of right-wing citizens. The Supreme Court gave him “immunity” while he is president. He thus has been given a judicial “mandate” to say and do just about anything while in office without any fear of punishment. So, he stretches the truth and lies.

For example, here’s what Linda Qui reported for the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/us/politics/trump-election-lies-fact-check.html).

“Before the 2020 election had even concluded, President Donald J. Trump laid the groundwork for an alternate reality in which he was declared the victor, falsely assailing the integrity of the race at nearly every turn.

“Those lies are now central to two criminal indictments brought against him by the Justice Department and in Georgia, and formed what prosecutors have described as the bedrock of his attempts to overturn the election.

“Draining the swamp”

“In public, he made more than 800 inaccurate claims about the election from the time the polls began closing on Nov. 3, 2020, to the end of his presidency, according to a database compiled by The Washington Post. Dozens of times, he simply characterized the election as ‘rigged,’ ‘stolen or ‘a hoax,’ and flatly and falsely declared he had won — even as a mountain of evidence proved otherwise. Other falsehoods were more specific about the voting and ballot-counting process, contained unproven allegations and promoted conspiracy theories.’”

As Trump has long proclaimed, he wants to “drain the swamp,” that is, re-focus, diminish, or end the parts of government that provide benefits and security for everyday people. And unelected Musk, anointed by Trump arbitrarily as a special adviser, has his team busily and arbitrarily firing tens of thousands of federal government workers. Musk’s team, dubbed DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) includes a handful of inexperienced and young subordinates who are identifying those in government jobs who are being fired. Thus, federal government workers are being fired for made-up reasons, regardless of how well they have performed in their jobs or how important the services they provide.

Trump views himself as “great”

There is another aspect of the anti-democratic and socially and politically destructive shenanigans. These efforts reflect Trump’s self-aggrandizing conceptions of himself. He sees himself as the best or second-best president of all time, even as God’s choice, a messiah, a king, deserving, he sometimes crows, a third presidential term or even one lasting until his death. He rarely if ever acknowledges mistakes.

———————-

Gutting Social Security

The focus of this post is on delving into one example, that is, of how he and Musk are laying the groundwork for the privatization of Social Security. If they have their way, the program will end up favoring upper-income groups, with the reduction if not elimination of benefits for millions of Americans. Bear in mind that this is only one example of how Trump/Musk are taking America toward what Ralph Nader calls “corporate fascism” (https://counterpunch.org/2025/03/03/trumps-autocratic-moves-toward-corporate-fascism),

The benefits for people from Social Security

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington State provides an overview of Social Security in a “fact sheet” she put on her Senate website on Feb. 28, 2025. She is Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
(https://murray.senate.gov/fact-sheet-trump-and-musk-plot-to-make-it-harder-for-americans-to-get-their-social-security-benefits).

Murray warns “of the Trump administration’s plans to gut the Social Security Administration (SSA)–and to make it harder for Americans who’ve paid into Social Security to get the benefits they have earned.” She informs readers of why it is an important government program, dating back to its creation in 1935 as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. SSA has not missed a payment to beneficiaries in all the time since the first recipient received benefits in 1940. (See evidence in the book, Social Security Works! by Nancy J. Altman and Eric R. Kingson.)

Murray writes: “People need help getting Social Security at some of the most vulnerable points in their lives—whether that’s the death of a spouse, the onset of a disability, or the loss of income that comes with retirement. Americans pay into Social Security their entire lives–it’s a promise they should be able to count on.

Why the SSA has been so important in the lives of untold millions of Americans

How they have served citizens

She continues: “Each year, SSA:
Receives 80 million calls to its 1-800 number.
Receives 57 million calls to its 1,200 field offices nationwide.
Receives 30 million visitors to its 1,200 field offices.
Processes 9 million applications for benefits.

“Without adequate customer service provided by SSA,” Murray points out, “Americans will be cheated out of receiving the benefits they have earned.”

“90% of SSA staff work across the country outside of the agency’s headquarters. SSA staff who are not providing direct service support perform critical work that keeps the agency and Social Security system operational, including supporting SSA’s IT infrastructure.

“SSA staff ensure 73 million Americans get their Social Security benefits each month–which is more beneficiaries than ever before. They do so even though SSA’s 57,000 staff level is already at the lowest level in 50 years.”

As noted, SSA has 1,200 field offices in communities all across the country that help Americans:
Apply to receive Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Apply to receive Supplemental Security Income and SNAP.
Get or replace a Social Security card.
Get assistance and address problems with benefits.

In 2023, SSA field offices had nearly 120,000 Americans visit per day.
Elon Musk and his DOGE crew are eager to close SSA field offices across the country that Americans count on.

“Closing field offices will force people to drive hours farther to get the basic services they are entitled to. For many–particularly beneficiaries who are disabled or who live in rural areas–the closures could mean losing out on assistance from SSA–and even benefits altogether.”

Americans want the benefits from Social Security

Kelly Kenneally and Tyler Bond of the National Institute on Retirement Security provide documentation on the American views of Social Security (https://nirsonline.org/report/socialsecurity2024). Here’s some of what they write.

“Social Security has evolved to become backbone of the U.S. retirement savings system, particularly for middle-class Americans, and often is referred to as one of the nation’s most popular government programs. Nearly all workers participate in Social Security, which means nearly all retirees receive at least some income from Social Security each month. Despite the popularity of Social Security, federal policymakers have yet to craft a long-term Social Security funding fix to address the impending depletion of the trust fund. In the coming decade, the funding challenges will force the nation into a debate and decisions about the future of Social Security.

“In anticipation of this coming debate, the National Institute on Retirement Security surveyed Americans on their views regarding the Social Security program. The survey asked Americans what they think of the program generally and what are their views about specific ideas on how to reform the program and shore up its financing. Stay tuned to learn the results!

“Americans’ Views of Social Security finds Americans want action now on a long-term funding solution for Social Security. When asked about the timing for Congress to act on addressing Social Security’s funding shortfall, Americans don’t want leaders to kick the can down the road. Eighty-seven percent say Congress should act now rather than waiting another ten years to find a solution. This sentiment holds strong across gender, age, and party affiliation.

“This nationwide survey also finds that 87 percent of Americans agree that Social Security should remain a priority for the nation no matter the state of budget deficits, and this support holds strong across party affiliation. Ninety percent of Democrats, 86 percent of Republicans and 88 percent of Independents support keeping Social Security a priority. Americans also support increasing employer and employee contributions to ensure the long-term sustainability of Social Security.”

The Trump/Wald plan for undermining Social Security

Murray’s Fact Sheet emphasizes that “Trump and Musk plan to demolish SSA and make it much harder for Americans to get answers about their benefits, file for benefits, get a new Social Security card, and much more.”

Making it harder to get service

Murray continues: “Trump and Musk will cause wait times to soar for seniors calling in to sort out issues with their benefits. They will force Americans in rural communities to drive hours to get the help they are owed, and their reckless plans will cheat Americans out of the benefits they have earned.

“Americans need to be able to talk to real people, often in person, to make sure they get their Social Security check—but Elon wants to shutter field offices people count on to apply for benefits, get a new Social Security card, and talk to someone who can help.”

Cutting an already under-staffed system

Murray: “Trump and Musk are working to erode customer service provided by SSA–service that Americans have earned–despite the fact that SSA’s administrative expenses already represent less than 1% of total benefits paid.”

Murray: “Reports indicate SSA may eliminate up to 50% of its workforce in what the agency calls ‘massive reorganizations,’ and SSA has now offered all employees incentives to leave the agency.”

Murray: “SSA is already very short-staffed, with 57,000 employees nationwide. There is simply no way to significantly reduce staff further without seriously jeopardizing customer service for tens of millions of Americans.”

Ashley Lopez and Jenna McLaughlin report on how Trump plans to cut some 7,000 jobs at the Social Security Administration (https://npr.org/2025/02/28/nx-s1-5296986/trump-worker-cuts-social-security-administration).

The effects of what Trump/Wald plan will have. Murray provides the following list.

• Wait times to get help on the phone will inevitably increase.
• Processing times for retirement and disability benefits will significantly worsen.
• Customer service at SSA has long suffered from historically low staffing levels and inadequate discretionary funding, which Democrats have pushed to increase each year while congressional Republicans push to cut non-defense funding.
• Currently, fewer than 40% of people who call SSA seeking to speak to a Social Security agent are able to get through to talk to someone.
• The average time someone waits to talk to someone on SSA’s 1-800 number is 30 minutes, but that excludes people who hang up because the wait is too long.
• This wait will increase under Trump and Musk’s plans.
• It now takes on average 240 days to process a disability claim–up from the recent historical average of approximately 110 days.
• Last year, an estimated 30,000 Americans died while waiting on a decision for their disability benefits.

Trump is mistaken about the real problem besetting Social Security

John Nichols reflects on Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress in an article published on March 4, 2025 and how the president inanely justifies his threats to Social Security (https://thenation.com/articles/politics/trump-social-security-threat).

“Glossing over issues such as resurgent inflation, stalling job grown and the fact that trade-war jitters had just caused the Dow to drop 1,300 points in two days, Trump instead devoted inordinate amounts of his speech to fawning remarks about billionaire Elon Musk’s slash-and-burn assault on federal agencies, objections to transgender athletes, and gripes that Democrats didn’t want to clap for him. As a USA Today headline announced, ‘Trump’s Speech Was All About Dodging Responsibility for the Economy He’s Crashing.’ Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett complained that, in a 99-minute-long address, ‘Trump spent 1 minute and 25 seconds on inflation and prices—and used the entire section to blame [former President] Biden. Zero solutions, zero policy announcements,’ while Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said, ‘I did not hear one word from Trump tonight about the economic reality facing 60 percent of our people [who live paycheck to paycheck], or the enormous stress that they are living under.’”

“But Trump did find time to speak,” at considerable length,” Nichols points out, “about how he thinks the nation’s Social Security Administration is a chaotic mess of waste, fraud and abuse. Claiming to have uncovered ‘shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program,’ the president repeated disproven assertions and outright lies in a speech that suggested that millions of Americans must be gaming the system. “Believe it or not,” Trump said, “government databases list 4.7 million Social Security numbers for people aged 100 to 109 years old,” Trump claimed. [Trump also said erroneously and absurdly claimed that there are tens of thousands of 160-years old getting Social Security benefits.] CNN fact checkers immediately explained, “The vast majority of these people do not have dates of death listed in Social Security’s database. But that doesn’t mean they are actually receiving monthly benefits. Public data from the Social Security Administration shows that about 89,000 people age 99 or over were receiving Social Security benefits in December 2024, not even close to the millions Trump invoked.”

Concluding thoughts

The Social Security program was one of the great achievements of FDR’s New Deal. Passed into law in 1935, it has since 1940 provided important benefits to people up to the present, without once missing a payment despite a limited staff in recent decades.

It is a “public good.” Trump/Wald want to reduce or eliminate public goods, while advancing a huge tax break for billionaires and other rich folks as one part of an anti-democratic agenda. They wrongly insist that the program is wasteful and full of fraud and ignore potential reforms. Given the present political advantages of the Republican Party, there is not much yet that Democrats can do to protect and reform Social Security. One hope is that in the mid-term elections in 2027 a majority of voters will switch sides to the Democrats and Congress will be able to reverse course on Social Security. Meanwhile, protests against what Trump/Wald are doing.

Trump-Musk attacks on democracy

Bob Sheak, Feb 24, 2025

Officially, Trump won the presidential election. He did so by the smallest margin in decades. However, he acts as though voters gave him an unprecedented “mandate.” He even says that he now has King-like power, that is, he is above the law, the Constitution doesn’t matter, and he and his partner, the billionaire Elon Musk, can do as they please in accessing government records, firing government workers, and reducing or eliminating government agencies and programs. There is some opposition. Their actions incite legal actions against what they are doing, polls go against them, and voters who supported Trump now gather to express their dissatisfaction with the mindless and harmful firing of thousands of government workers and the impacts on programs people care about. Trump and Musk do this seemingly without any concern about the consequences for communities and people. They appear set on creating a society without Constitutional guardrails, rather they want a society that reflects the arbitrary power that exists in authoritarian governments like Russia and Hungary. Indeed, Trump’s friendly relationship to Putin is well known. Craig Unger wrote a book about it: “The House of Trump House of Putin (publ. 2018).

Here are some examples, as of Feb 24, 2025.

1 – Many of Trump’s early actions are unpopular.

Dan Balz, Scott Clement and Emily Suskin report that a Post-Ipsos poll finds many of Trump’s early actions are unpopular (https://washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/20/trump-poll-unpopular-post-ilpsos). Here’s some of what they report.

President Donald Trump has opened his second term with a flurry of actions designed to radically disrupt and shrink the federal bureaucracy, but reviews from Americans are mixed to negative on many of his specific initiatives, and 57 percent say he has exceeded his authority since taking office, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll.

Overall, 43 percent of Americans say they support what the president has done during his first month in office, with 48 percent saying they oppose. Those who strongly oppose outnumber those who strongly support by 37 percent to 27 percent.
Trump’s initiatives have drawn numerous lawsuits attempting to block or slow his progress, along with claims from critics that he lacks the authority to do many of the things he has proposed. While most Americans agree with the view that he has exceeded his authority, 40 percent say he has the power to do what he’s doing.

About 2 in 3 say Trump should have to get approval from Congress to freeze funding for programs previously approved by Congress and past presidents.
The best and worst things Trump has done, in respondents’ own words:
“Hiring Elon Musk to gut the government. Elon Musk may be a brilliant man, but he is not good working with people and does not know what he is doing quite frankly.”

2 – Trump believes he is above the law

Check out Benjamin Oreskes article for more on Trump’s self-conception as being a “king” (https://nytimes.com/2025/02/19/us/politics/trump-king-image.html)

The Common Dreams’ staff cite Trump’s “quoting Napolean,” as the president “Openly Declares He’s Above the Law” (https://commondreams.org/news/trump-quotes-napolean). The article was published on Feb. 16, 2025. They write,

“Fears that the United States is in the midst of a constitutional crisis—or something significantly worse—intensified Saturday after President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post that “he who saves his country does not violate any law,” a variation of a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.” They may be, the staff write, “[t]he single most un-American and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an American president.”

The president’s post appears on X, “the platform owned by billionaire shadow government leader Elon Musk—[and] came as his administration continued its sweeping and destructive assault on the federal government and workforce, running roughshod over the law in the process.”

They continue. “Trump, his handpicked Cabinet officials, and Musk have also disregarded or openly attacked the other two co-equal branches of government, accusing judges who have moved to halt or limit the new administration’s actions of being Democratic partisans.”

3 – Trump’s Executive Orders Build Toward Dictatorial “Unitary Executive” Power

C.J. Polychroniou argues in an article on Truthout, Feb 21, that Trump’s flood of executive orders build toward “Unitary Executive Power,”
(https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-executive-orders-build-toward-dictatorial-unitary-executive-power). Here’s some of what he writes.

“During his first month in office, President Donald Trump has signed a plethora of executive orders that have proclaimed a dramatic expansion of the powers of the executive branch. In his latest, issued on February 18 and entitled Ensuring Accountability for all Agencies, Trump aims to bring all independent federal regulatory agencies under the direct control of the chief executive.” He seems to have little concern with the law in this regard.”

Polychroniou continues.

“David M. Driesen, university professor at Syracuse University College of Law, says that Trump’s executive order to curb the authority of independent agencies is illegal and that the president is using unitary executive theory to establish a dictatorship. In the interview that follows, Driesen addresses Trump’s recent actions as well as the debate over unitary executive theory — a legal theory which says that the U.S. president can rule over the executive branch with absolute power. In two recent cases the far right Supreme Court has signaled increasing openness to this theory, once considered a fringe interpretation of the Constitution. Legal scholars and advocates, including Driesen, are now sounding the alarm that Trump’s seizure of dictatorial executive power may succeed with the court’s approval.”

4 – Trump and Musk fire thousands of workers in the Executive Branch

Hannah Natanson, Lisa Rein and Emily Davies report that “the Trump administration fires thousands for ‘performance’ without evidence, in messy rush”
(https://washingtonpost.com/nation/20-25/02/17/trump-fires-federal-workers-performance).

“This account of how the Trump administration’s firings played out over the weekend, sowing pain and chaos, is based on interviews and messages with more than 275 federal workers, as well as dozens of government records and communications reviewed by The Post.”

“Contrary to Trump’s claims, the Washington Post journalists find that “many probationary employees targeted in latest Trump cuts across agencies had excellent ratings; legal challenges are expected.”

They continue. “Many federal government employees were dismissed over the holiday weekend as managers confronted a Trump administration demand to fire workers by Tuesday. In group texts and in online forums, they dubbed the error-ridden run of firings the ‘St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.’”

“The firings targeted new hires on probation, who have fewer protections than permanent employees, and swept up people with years of service who had recently transferred between agencies, as well as military veterans and people with disabilities employed through a program that sped their hiring but put them on two years’ probation. Most probationary employees have limited rights to appeal dismissals, but union heads have vowed to challenge the mass firings in court. The largest union representing federal workers has also indicated it plans to fight the terminations and pursue legal action.”

All of this mayhem reflects an administration racing “to execute a vision Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have touted for a leaner, reshaped government. The latest wave of personnel actions already prompted an administrative complaint on behalf of workers at nine agencies, adding to more than a dozen legal tests of Trump’s power filed one month into his term.”

“Firing employees en masse with the same claim of poor performance is illegal, said Jim Eisenmann, a partner at the Alden Law Group, a law firm specializing in litigation by federal employees. It violates federal law covering career civil service employees, he said.” Meanwhile, federal workers in an increasing number of agencies are being terminated, including “at the Interior Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Energy Department” as well as at Education, the Small Business Administration, the FAA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Transportation Department, the Veterans Administration, and more. This means that vital government services will become less available.

This can have catastrophic effects. With fewer workers in Air Control, the next airline disaster is more likely (https://commondreams.org/news/federal-aviation-administration). Access by vets to health care is being reduced (https://prospect.org/health/2025-02-19-va-secretary-doge-middle-finger-to-vets). Access to nuclear weapons data is less secure (https://counterpunch.org/2025/02/19/a-whole-lot-of-nuclear-madness-in-one-week).

5 – Trump’s foreign policy shifts toward Russia and other autocratic states and fascist political parties

Patrick Healy, a NYT Opinion columnist, interviews Masha Gessen and Bret Stephens on Trump’s first month in power, focusing on his “use of power on the world stage, “how Trump would like to pursue a foreign policy with imperialistic implications, and in close relations with Vladimer Putin (https://nytimes.com/2025/02/21/opinion/trump-putin-ukraine.html). Here are excerpts.

Patrick Healy: Bret, Masha, you’ve both written powerfully for years about Russia and the West, totalitarian states, Vladimir Putin, the Ukraine war and Donald Trump’s use of power. We are one month into Trump’s presidency, and the West seems at the beginning of a potentially significant realignment: Trump is starting to align with Putin over Europe; Trump is repeating Putin’s lies about Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky being a “dictator” who caused the war; and foreign allies and Republican leaders seem weak or pliant in the face of Trump. What is all of this adding up to? Are we seeing a realignment among the United States, Russia and Europe?

Bret Stephens: It might be premature to draw firm conclusions. But, for now, I’d say the word “realignment” feels much too weak. “Reversal” comes closer to the mark. A reversal in our vision of who counts as a democrat or a dictator. A reversal in who counts as a friend or an adversary. A reversal in our approach to the domestic politics of allied states. A reversal in the overall direction of our post-World War foreign policy, which was about supporting embattled or enfeebled allies, promoting economic liberalization, embracing democracy (or at least non-totalitarian states), favoring open societies over closed ones. It’s a world turned upside down.

“Another thing: It feels that Trump is seeking to turn America into a predatory state. The casual demand that Denmark relinquish Greenland. The not-so-casual demand that Ukraine hand over much of its mineral wealth. The surly threats to Panama, whose president is as pro-American as they come. The deal to return desperate Venezuelan refugees to the socialist dictatorship from which they fled in hunger and desperation. The joking (or not) about turning Canada into a 51st state; the unilateral and unprovoked trampling of trade agreements, like the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement he negotiated in his first term as a replacement for NAFTA.”

6 – Resistance of the Trump/Musk attacks on Democracy

Meanwhile, there is resistance to the Trump/Musk attacks. Here are two examples.

Bernie Sanders tour to “fight oligarchy.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders is on a tour of the country to expose the anti-democratic moves of Trump and Musk. Julia Conley reports that thousands are attending Sanders gatherings (https://commondreams.org/news/bernie-sanders-donald-trump).

“After addressing more than 3,400 Nebraska residents in Omaha Friday evening, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Saturday made his second stop on his National Tour to Fight Oligarchy—telling Iowa City, Iowa residents that “Trumpism will not be defeated by politicians inside the D.C. Beltway.”

“For better or worse, that is not going to happen,” said the Vermont Independent senator, whose broadly popular policy proposals have long been dismissed by Democratic leaders as unrealistic and radical while President Donald Trump has increasingly captured the attention of the working class Americans who would benefit most from Sanders’ ideas.

“‘It will only be defeated by millions of Americans in Iowa, in Vermont, in Nebraska, in every state in this country, who come together in a strong grassroots movement and say no to oligarchy, no to authoritarianism, no to kleptocracy, no to massive cuts to programs that low-income and working Americans desperately need, no to huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country,’ said Sanders.”

“Today in America,’ Conley writes, ‘we are rapidly moving toward an oligarchic form of society where a handful of multibillionaires not only have extraordinary wealth, but unprecedented economic, media, and political power,’ said Sanders in Iowa City, which like Omaha is represented by a Republican U.S. House member who narrowly won reelection last November and has faced pressure to reject the GOP budget plan. ‘Brothers and sisters, that is not the democracy that men and women fought and died to defend.’”

“Jeremy Slevin, a senior adviser to Sanders, reported that in Iowa City, the senator gave ‘not one, not two, but three different speeches to overflow crowds,’ with 2,000 people lining up to see him speak ‘on a freezing cold day in a Republican district.’”

State Attorney Generals fight back

Here are excerpts from a statement by Wisconsin’s Department of Justice.

“MADISON, Wis. – Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul today announced Wisconsin is joining a coalition of 19 states in filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration to stop the unauthorized disclosure of Americans’ private information and sensitive data. The lawsuit asserts that the Trump administration illegally provided Elon Musk and the so-called ‘Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)’ unauthorized access to the Treasury Department’s central payment system, and therefore to Americans’ most sensitive personal information, including bank account details and Social Security numbers. This expanded access could allow Musk and his team to block federal funds to states and programs providing health care, childcare, and other critical services. With this lawsuit, the coalition is seeking to stop the Trump administration’s new policy that illegally grants DOGE, Musk, and others access to Americans’ confidential information and the U.S. Treasury’s payment systems.

“‘Wisconsinites expect the federal government to treat their Social Security numbers, bank account information, and other sensitive personal details with the highest level of protection and confidentiality—and that obligation doesn’t go out the window just because Elon Musk says it should,’ said Gov. Evers. ‘Giving political appointees access to our most personal information like this is illegal. That’s plain as day.’”
Concluding thoughts

Trump, Musk their rich and ideological allies, have taken control of key pillars of government and want to use their power to curtail or destroy opponents. Their vision appears to be of a country under autocratic control, where the rich and big corporations benefit from low taxes, minimal regulation, and the privatization of everything from which they can profit. It’s not clear how far they will go in their efforts to destroy democracy and increase the profitable opportunities for their rich and powerful allies, but as of now it appears they have few if any limits. Whether citizens can mount effective social movements and political campaigns and stop the Trump/Musk shedding of the Constitution, the laws that protect ordinary citizens, and the programs that offer necessary services remains to be seen.

At the same time, polls indicate dissatisfaction with what they are doing, state governors and other state officials and citizens are speaking out against the Trump/Musk attempts to replace arbitrary and corporate efforts to reduce government’s independence and resources.

It’s a dangerous time, epitomized by the President

Bob Sheak, Jan 25, 2025

Trump intended his second inaugural address to be uplifting and unifying, though it is riddled with questionable claims, downright lies, and is hardly unifying. (See a transcript of the address at: https://nytimes.com/2025/01/20/us/politics/trump-inaugural-speech.html.)

As of Jan. 20, his first day in office, he began implementing many of the policies to which he referred in the address as well as in speeches during the presidential campaign, and, in some cases, over many years. There are some issues that he avoided discussing; for example, whether he will issue a federal ban on abortions. By the end of his first days in office, he issued hundreds of “executive actions,” many of which will be contested in courts (https://apnews.com/article/what-has-trump-done-trump-executive-orders-f061fbe7f08c08d81509a6af20ef8fc0). Here are some examples of Trump’s actions and anticipated actions and the effects. They threaten to destroy the tenuous democracy that we know, and replace it with a authoritarian system that is the antithesis of democracy.

He has not unified the country

He asserts in his inaugural address, for example, “National unity is now returning to America” and “I [Trump] want to be a peacemaker and a unifier.” His rhetoric and actions belie such claims. Rather, his views have been and continue to be disruptive and anti-democratic, more to generate fear and ignorance rather than relief or understanding.

The vote count does not support Trump’s claim that his victory reflects national unity. The 2024 presidential vote indicates that the presidential vote was close and that there are 75+ million Americans who voted against him, 77+ million who voted for him, and, according to data from the University of Florida Election Lab, “an estimated 89 million Americans, or about 36% of the country’s voting-age population [who] did not vote in the 2024 general election” (https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-15/how-many-people-didnt-vote-in-the-2024-election#google_vignette).

His bizarre notion that he is the country’s savior

With respect to the earlier attempt on his life, he says, “I was saved by God to make America great again.” In Trump’s view, he is America’s savior. If people do what he wants, America will thrive. This pseudo-religious self-characterization is arrogant and even psychopathological. But millions of Americans voted him into the White House. Indeed, the largest segment of Trump’s base are Christian Nationalists who believe America should be viewed as a right-wing evangelical Christian country, disregarding the constitionally-based separation of religion from politics (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/07/christian-nationalists-embrace-trump-as-their-savior-will-they-be-his).

Here’s another report on Trump’s beliefs by Ken Bensinger of the New York Times (https://nytimes.com/2024/01/11/us/politics/trump-god-video-pastors-iowa.html).

“A viral video praising former President Donald J. Trump has offended a key Iowa constituency in the lead-up to next week’s critical Iowa caucuses: faith leaders.
The video, which Mr. Trump first posted to Truth Social last Friday and then played before taking the stage at several rallies in Iowa over the weekend, is called ‘God Made Trump.’ In starkly religious, almost messianic tones, it depicts the former president as the vessel of a higher power sent to save the nation.
“God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God gave us Trump,” begins the video….”

Trump wants to increase US production of fossil fuels, ignoring or denying the climate effects

Trump notes in his inaugural address that America “has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth and we are going to use it.” As is well known, he has long rejected the scientifically-proven realty of a growing climate crisis that is caused mostly by fossil fuels (80%). Nonetheless, if he has his way, there will be more fossil fuels extracted and utilized in America and liquified natural gas exports will go up.

In an in-depth article for The Guardian, Oliver Milman and Dharna Noor report on the Trump’s executive orders boosting fossil fuels (https://theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/22/trump-big-oil-energy-priorities-explained). Here’s some of what they write.

“Through a flurry of executive orders, a newly inaugurated Donald Trump has made clear his support for the ascendancy of fossil fuels, the dismantling of support for cleaner energy and the United States’ exit from the fight to contain the escalating climate crisis.

“‘We will drill, baby, drill,’ the president said in his inaugural address on Monday [Jan. 20, 2025].

‘We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have – the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it. We’re going to use it.’

Milman and Noor continue. “Trump has promised to cut Americans’ energy costs in half within a year and he claimed removing all restraints on drilling for ‘liquid gold’ will achieve this, even though the US is already producing more oil and gas than any other country in history.”

There is little place for climate treaties, wind or solar energy, and electric vehicles in Trump’s energy plans.

Milman and Noor write: “Climate treaties, wind energy and electric vehicles are not part of this vision, with Trump signing orders to ditch or stymie them.” Trump ignores scientists who say “the world must urgently move away from fossil fuels to avoid the ever-worsening impacts of the climate crisis, as evidenced by last year being the hottest ever recorded and Los Angeles suffering ruinous wildfires.

The energy oligarchs invested in Trump’s presidential campaign and are now being rewarded, as Milman and Noor point out.

“It was a good day, though, for the fossil fuel executives who poured tens of millions of dollars into Trump’s election campaign. Some celebrated a few blocks away from the inauguration in Washington at a party where they sipped champagne and nibbled on pastries with Trump’s face on them.

“Trump declared a “national energy emergency” on Monday – part of a spate of actions meant to boost the already-booming fossil fuel industry. Invoked under the National Emergencies Act, the order aims to unlock an array of executive powers to fast-track the production and distribution of energy.”

Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the green non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council, says there is no energy emergency. Rather, there is a “climate emergency.”

And despite the existential threat of fossil-fuel-driven climate disasters, “Trump has again initiated the U.S. exit from the Paris climate deal, a non-binding agreement to avoid the world hitting temperatures that would deliver disastrous heatwaves, floods and storms upon societies and economies already strained by extreme events. In joining just three other countries – Yemen, Iran and Libya – outside the Paris process, the world’s second-largest carbon emitter is walking away from this shared goal while also halting funding for poorer countries at most risk of climate-driven calamities.”

Trump also overturned two of Joe Biden’s attempts to restrict fossil fuel development. One, which the former president put forth earlier this month, meant to withdraw swaths of the US coasts from future oil and gas drilling, including the entire US east coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, parts of the Pacific coast and portions of Alaska’s Bering Sea. Another 2023 order limited drilling in nearly 3m acres of the Arctic Ocean in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska….”

Make the U.S. military ever more globally dominant

Trump points out in his inaugural address that America has the world’s ‘strongest military’ and he plans to make it even stronger by increasing military spending. It is well known outside of Trump’s circles that we have an inflated and wasteful military budget that needs to be reduced.

William Hartung, an expert on military spending and its effects, substantiates this point in many articles, including this one in Counter Punch
(https://counterpunch.org/2024/02/28/war-is-bad-for-you-and-the-economy). Here’s some of what he writes.

“…the opportunity costs of throwing endless trillions of dollars at the military means far less is invested in other crucial American needs, ranging from housing and education to public health and environmental protection. Yes, military spending did indeed help America recover from the [1930s] Great Depression but not because it was military spending. It helped because it was spending, period. Any kind of spending at the levels devoted to fighting World War II would have revived the economy. While in that era, such military spending was certainly a necessity, today similar spending is more a question of (corporate) politics and priorities than of economics.

“In [recent] years Pentagon spending has soared and the defense budget continues to head toward an annual trillion-dollar mark, while the prospects of tens of millions of Americans have plummeted. More than 140 million of us now fall into poor or low-income categories, including one out of every six children. More than 44 million of us suffer from hunger in any given year. An estimated 183,000 Americans died of poverty-related causes in 2019, more than from homicide, gun violence, diabetes, or obesity. Meanwhile, ever more Americans are living on the streets or in shelters as homeless people hit a record 650,000 in 2022.

Extending and sealing off US territory

Trump is hardly a unifier or peacemaker in the U.S. or abroad. He wants to acquire Greenland and retake control of the Panama Canal. He wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. He has even said that he would like to annex Canada as the 51st state. And he has toyed with the idea of using the military to invade Mexico to stop the flow of immigrants into the U.S. He will withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Peace Accord. And has opened up the door to removing the U.S. from NATO.

In an article in Foreign Policy, Alexandra Sharp delves into what we know about Trump’s foreign policy (https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/21/donald-trump-executive-orders-day-one-us-immigration-who-tiktok). Here’s some of what she writes.

“U.S. President Donald Trump hit the ground running for his first day in office on Monday, signing 26 executive orders and issuing a slew of other promises intended to prioritize Washington’s interests on the global stage. ‘The golden age of America begins right now,’ Trump vowed at the start of his inaugural address.

“Among his first acts, Trump declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, fulfilling a key campaign pledge to curb migration. To address border security, he ordered the deployment of troops; resumed construction of the border wall; reinstated the ‘Remain in Mexico’ program, which forces asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico during immigration proceedings; and shut down the CBP One app, a Biden-era program that allowed some migrants to enter the United States legally through an appointment lottery system. Trump also designated cartels and foreign gangs as ‘global terrorists’ in an effort to expand government efforts to combat human trafficking and drug smuggling.”

“To drive home his America First approach, Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” implemented a 90-day pause on U.S. foreign development assistance, and signaled his intention to leave the World Health Organization within 12 months” [He has already pulled America out of WHO.]

Trump also ordered the United States to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement in a major blow to global efforts to limit climate change.”

Attempting to end birthright citizenship

Sharp continues.

“In addition, Trump directed federal agencies to stop recognizing birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented migrants, a right guaranteed under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Attorneys general for 18 states, the city of San Francisco, and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the order.

A Line-by-Line Breakdown of Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Executive Order

Elie Mystal offers a “line-by-line” breakdown of Trump’s birthright Citizenship Executive Order in an article for The Nation, Jan 22, 2025
(https://thenation.com/article/politics/trump-birthright-citizenship-executive-order).

Mystal starts out arguing that “Almost every sentence of the order is wrong, misleading, or flagrantly unconstitutional.” Here’s more.

“I cannot tell you the worst thing Trump did in his first hours—“the worst” is a subjective assessment largely based on how close you are to the people Trump would like to harm. There is, however, one executive order that attempts to nullify an entire constitutional amendment by fiat, so that is the one I have decided to focus on.”

“Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship”—better known as the birthright citizenship executive order—attempts to cancel the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. Getting rid of constitutional amendments via executive order is new, and, for me at least, “the worst.”

“Nearly every line of this order is wrong, misleading, or flagrantly unconstitutional. To appreciate the depths of racism and lawlessness embedded within it, you need to read every line. Lawyers have done that, and a lawsuit has already been filed attempting to stop the order. But I believe every single person in this country who is not a mouth-breathing racist deserves to understand just how despicable this thing is. I want you to be able to fight the racists in your family, chapter and verse, on this unmitigated piece of trash.”

Mystal considers Trump’s order in depth. Here are highlights.

“Section 1. Purpose. The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift.”

“This is simply wrong. Citizenship is a privilege, but it is not a “gift.” It’s not bestowed by individual benevolent white folks when they happen to be in a good mood. Birthright citizenship is a right, one that has been enshrined in the organizing document of our country.

“There is a legal process for taking away rights, but that process has nothing to do with the bigoted orders of an aging despot. Taking away the right to birthright citizenship requires nothing less than a constitutional amendment. Trump wants you to forget that by pretending that citizenship is a gift.”

“The Fourteenth Amendment states: ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.’ That provision rightly repudiated the Supreme Court of the United States’s shameful decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), which misinterpreted the Constitution as permanently excluding people of African descent from eligibility for United States citizenship solely based on their race.”

Mystal continues.

“Even if the courts do get around to ‘stopping’ the order, Trump controls the military. He controls the State Department and the Justice Department. He controls the Social Security Administration. I don’t have a lot of belief that he will follow a court order on this, even if the courts order him to stop.

“All I can do is tell you that the order is unconstitutional, and racist, and obviously so. The people who support this order are wrong, and racist. The journalists who promote and normalize the order are wrong and racist. This order violates one of the fundamental principles of the United States, and people should react to it like it does”.

Pardoning insurrectionists

On January 20, 2025, his first day as president, Trump pardoned 1,500 or 1,600 people who were imprisoned for their violent participation in the Jan. 6 insurrection. This is a reflection of Trump’s “big lie,” that is, despite the overwhelming evidence, he denies that they engaged in destructive actions on Jan. 6 and continues to insist they were wrongly punished and incarcerated.

Dan Barry and Alan Feuer analyze “How Trump Inverted the Violent History of Jan. 6 (https://nytimes.com/2025/01/05/us/politics/january-6-capitol-riot-trump.html).

“In the wake of the attack on the Capitol, Mr. Trump’s volatile political career seemed over, his incendiary words before the riot rattling the leaders of his own Republican Party. Myriad factors explain his stunning resurrection, but not least of them is how effectively he and his loyalists have laundered the history of Jan. 6, turning a political nightmare into a political asset.

“What began as a strained attempt to absolve Mr. Trump of responsibility for Jan. 6 gradually took hold, as his allies in Congress and the media played down the attack and redirected blame to left-wing plants, Democrats and even the government. Violent rioters — prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned — somehow became patriotic martyrs.”

The violence

The facts tell a different story. Barry and Feuer give this well-documented account of events.

“That day [Jan. 6, 2021] was an American calamity. Lawmakers huddled for safety. Vice President Mike Pence eluded a mob shouting that he should be hanged. Several people died during and after the riot, including one protester by gunshot and four police officers by suicide, and more than 140 officers were injured in a protracted melee that nearly upended what should have been the routine certification of the electoral victory of Mr. Trump’s opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Trump explains away the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, pardons the insurrectionists, and wants to punish those who investigated those who were incarcerated

“But with his return to office,” Barry and Feuer write, “Mr. Trump now has the platform to further rinse and spin the Capitol attack into what he has called ‘a day of love.’ He has vowed to pardon rioters in the first hour of his new administration [which he has done], while his congressional supporters are pushing for criminal charges against those who investigated his actions on that chaotic day.”

When asked about the reframing of the Capitol riot, and whether Mr. Trump accepts any responsibility for what unfolded on Jan. 6, his spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, instead referred in a statement to the “political losers” who tried to derail his career and asserted that “the mainstream media still refuses to report the truth about what happened that day.” She added, “The American people did not fall for the Left’s fear mongering over January 6th.”

“The Republican-controlled Senate acquitted him of incitement, but its leader, Mitch McConnell, declared him ‘practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day’ — a sentiment apparently shared by most Americans, with nearly 60 percent saying in polls that he should never hold office again.”

The denial

Barry and Feuer write, “Before the Capitol had even been secured, Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, was asserting on Twitter that the events had ‘all the hallmarks of Antifa provocation.’ Hours later, the Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham was telling viewers that ‘there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.’ And by morning, Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, was claiming on the House floor that some rioters ‘were masquerading as Trump supporters and in fact were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.’ (Mr. Gaetz would become President-elect Trump’s first choice for attorney general before being derailed by scandal.)

“According to M.I.T. Technology Review, this fabrication was repeated online more than 400,000 times in the 24 hours after the Capitol attack, amplified by a cast of MAGA influencers, Republican officials and members of Mr. Trump’s family.”

Through the spring and summer of 2021 [and into the present], Mr. Trump’s Republican allies sought to sow doubt and blame others.

Glorifying the rioters

“Amid the conspiratorial swirl of antifa agitators and deep-state plots, a related narrative was gaining traction: the glorification of those who had attacked the Capitol. Instead of marauders, vandals and aggressors, they were now political prisoners, hostages, martyrs. Patriots.”

“At a mid-January rally in Florence, Ariz., he [Trump] described the Jan. 6 defendants as persecuted political prisoners. Later that month, in Conroe, Texas, he promised that if he was re-elected, and if pardons were required, ‘we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.’”

“His efforts seemed to be working. By mid-2022, an NBC News poll found that fewer than half of Americans still considered Mr. Trump ‘solely’ or ‘mainly’ responsible for Jan. 6.”

Indictments

“In August 2023, Mr. Trump was indicted twice on charges of interfering with the 2020 election results: at the state level, for illegally seeking to overturn the results of the election in Georgia, which he had narrowly lost; and at the federal level, for conspiring to impede the Jan. 6 certification of Mr. Biden’s election.

“A subsequent court filing by Jack Smith, the special counsel leading the federal investigation, cited Mr. Trump’s steadfast endorsement of the rioters and of the prison choir, ‘many of whose criminal history and/or crimes on January 6 were so violent that their pretrial release would pose a danger to the public.’ The former president, it continued, ‘has financially supported and celebrated these offenders — many of whom assaulted law enforcement on January 6 — by promoting and playing their recording of the national anthem at political rallies and calling them ‘hostages’”

Promising Payback

“An emboldened Mr. Trump has already indicated that his presidential agenda will include payback for those who declared him responsible for the Capitol attack. He has said that Mr. Smith ‘should be thrown out of the country,’ and that Ms. Cheney and other leaders of the House select committee — ‘one of the greatest political scams in history,’ his spokeswoman, Ms. Leavitt, said — should ‘go to jail,’ without providing evidence to warrant such extreme measures.

Creating a paramilitary force

Joan Walsh reports in an article for The Nation on Jan. 23, 2025 on how Trump liberates his own paramilitary force (https://thenation.com/article/politics/trump-january-6-pardons-paramilitary-force).

She writes: “Convicted felon Donald Trump, also known as our 47th president, unleashed such tyranny, cruelty, and idiocy on his first day in office that I can’t tell you which of his moves is ‘worst.’

“Trump’s quick move to pardon or commute the sentences of roughly 1,600 January 6 prisoners has to be at the top. It’s like he just liberated his own paramilitary force. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 18 and 22 years in prison, respectively, got out Tuesday. They and others who helped plan the violent insurrection [of Jan. 6, 2021] are now back on the streets.”

If I were being charitable, I might say this is one rare example of Trump showing loyalty to others. Just as Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts made sure Trump didn’t have to pay for inciting the January 6 riots, so did Trump bestow his own special form of ‘immunity’ on his followers who were charged for that bloody day. He continued to call them “hostages.”

Trump declared at a Tuesday night news conference, “they have already served years in prison and they’ve served them viciously,” Trump declared at a Tuesday night news conference. “It’s a disgusting prison. It’s been horrible. It’s inhumane. It’s been a terrible, terrible thing.”

Walsh continues her report. “At least three Jan. 6 defendants pleaded guilty to assaulting Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officer Michael Fanone, who reportedly “suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury during the attack” and was forced to retire from the police force. Daniel Rodriguez pleaded guilty on Feb. 14, 2023 to tasing Fanone, as well as other charges. Another defendant, Kyle Young, pleaded guilty on May 5, 2022 to assaulting Fanone, as he ‘held the officer’s left wrist’ and ‘pulled’ Fanone’s arm away from his body.’ During the attack on officers in a Capitol tunnel, Young also ‘held a strobe light toward the police line and pushed forward a stick-like object.’ A third man, Albuquerque Head, pleaded guilty to dragging Fanone into the crowd of rioters, yelling ‘I got one!’ Rodriguez was subsequently sentenced to more than 12 years in prison, while Young received more than seven years and Head was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison.”

“The Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police… criticized the pardons and commutations, not only those of the January 6 prisoners but also of individuals whose sentences President Joe Biden commuted, saying they were “deeply discouraged” by both presidents’ actions. “The IACP and FOP firmly believe that those convicted of [killing or assaulting law enforcement officers] should serve their full sentences,” the groups said in a joint statement.
Maybe the most poignant testimony on Tuesday came from former Capitol Police sergeant Aquilino Gonell, who shared the messages alerting him when every convicted felon he’d testified against got released.

“Each email and call log is a different violent rioter who assaulted me in the tunnel. If you are defending these people who brutally assaulted the police, maybe you ARE NOT a supporter of the police and the rule of law to begin with. If you did you would want accountability.”

“On Patriots.Win, a Trump-boosting website, at least two dozen people hoped for the executions of Democrats, judges, or law enforcement linked to the January 6 cases, Reuters reported. “They called for jurists or police to be hanged, pummeled to death, ground up in wood chippers or thrown from helicopters.

“Gather the entire federal judiciary into a stadium. Then have them listen and watch while the judges are beaten to death,” one wrote. “Cut their heads off and put them on pikes outside” the Justice Department.

“Jacob Chansley, known as the Q-Anon shaman, had already served his three years in prison. But he celebrated his pardon this way: ‘NOW I AM GONNA BUY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!!’”

Concluding thoughts

We are now at a moment in history, when Trump and his allies are in control of many of the pillars of government, both houses of the U.S. Congress, many courts including the Supreme Court, and the White House. He has even been bestowed by the Supreme Court with legal “immunity” while he is president. Trump and his allies can, so it seems, act with impunity and not suffer any penalty. It remains to be seen whether they will succeed.

In his book, The Reactionary Spirit, Zack Beauchamp suggests that Trump’s forces can be stymied, diverted, or slowed down. He writes:

“The contest for democracy’s future is…different in some respects from the one previous generations faced, but at its heart the struggle is the same. It is a conflict over whether democracy’s champions are as committed to equality as its rivals are to hierarchy. Previous generations of democrats showed that they were up to the challenge. The great question facing all of us today is whether we are” (p.246).

Examples of genuine reforms

Timothy J. Heaphy also offers a hopeful statement in his book, Harbingers.

“To fix our broken democracy, we should pursue three basic goals. First, we should do all we can to encourage people to participate and make it easy for them to vote, stay informed, and voice their concerns.

“Second, we need to find ways to teach and model constructive engagement, giving people the tools to sift information, pursue and consider alternative points of view, and listen to and learn from their fellow citizens. This should start early in public schools that help young people navigate the systems by which they receive information and encourage them to pursue the first goal of participation.

“Finally, we need to create systems for Americans to come together in common purpose – working together in service to their communities and finding ways to help one another” (p. 226).

The turmoil and human suffering to come in 2025

The turmoil and human suffering to come in 2025
Bob Sheak December 3, 2025

The Presidential Election

Trump barely won the presidential election in November. Although he claims that his victory gave him a mandate to implement an extreme right-wing agenda, the numbers say otherwise. His margin of victory was the smallest of any presidential election since 1900. And we should bear in mind that Trump’s vote is unfairly buttressed by widespread right-wing gerrymanding in “red” states. James M. Lindsay cites the following “official” numbers in an article for the Council for Foreign Relations (https://cfr.org/article/2024-election-numbers).

“Early election coverage described Trump’s victory as a landslide. But whether you go by the Electoral College vote or the popular vote, it was anything but. The 312 Electoral College votes that Trump won are just six more than Joe Biden won in 2020, twenty less than Barack Obama won in 2012, and fifty-three less than Obama won in 2008. Trump’s Electoral College performance pales in comparison to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s landslide victory in 1936 (523 electoral votes), Lyndon Johnson’s in 1964 (486), Richard Nixon’s in 1972 (520), or Ronald Reagan’s in 1984 (525). In terms of the popular vote, more people voted for someone not named Trump for president than voted for Trump in 2024, and his margin of victory over Harris was 1.5 percentage points. That is the fifth smallest margin of victory in the thirty-two presidential races held since 1900.”

Despite such a narrow victory, Trump’s claims he won a massive victory and continues to promise to implement an extreme right-wing agenda once he is in office.

Trump’s top agenda items

They include the following: (1) tariffs, (2) the deportation or detention of all undocumented residents, (3) tax cuts for the wealthy, (4) pardons for many (if not all) who participated in the insurrection, and (5) revenge on his political and media “enemies.” Under the influence of Elon Musk, Trump appears now to be open to allowing some high-skilled foreign workers to enter the country under the H-1B program. The present article will consider #s 1 and 2. But note, first, that he has the support of Republicans, large swaths of the rich and powerful, and his unquestioning base of tens of millions of Americans. But the billionaires play a disproportionate role.

Trump’s inner support team

Trump is being influenced by wealthy advisers and by those who support his right-wing extremism. One of his chief advisers in the presidential transition, ending on January 20, is multi-billionaire Elon Musk. Musk supported Trump’s presidential campaign with contributions of 200-250 million dollars. He is not the only billionaire in Trump’s entourage. New York Time’s journalists, Theodore Schleifer, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, identify “the Silicon Valley Billionaires Steering Trump’s Transition (https://nytimes.com/2024/12/06/us/politics/trump-elon-musk-silicon-vallley.html). The journalists tell us that the “article is based on interviews with more than a dozen people with insight into the transition, including people who have participated in the process. Most spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve their relationships with Mr. Trump.”

Here’s some of what they report.

“The week after the November election, President-elect Donald J. Trump gathered his top advisers in the tearoom at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, to plan the transition to his second-term government.

“Mr. Trump had brought two of his most valued houseguests to the meeting: the billionaire Tesla boss Elon Musk and the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison.”

The journalists continue.

“Mr. Trump has delighted in a critical addition to his transition team: the Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires who have been all over the transition, shaping hiring decisions and even conducting interviews for senior-level jobs. Many of those who are not formally involved, like Mr. Ellison, have been happy to sit in on the meetings.”

“Their involvement, to a degree far deeper than previously reported, has made this one of the most potentially conflict-ridden presidential transitions in modern history. It also carries what could be vast implications for the Trump administration’s policies on issues including taxes and the regulation of artificial intelligence, not to mention clashing mightily with the notion that Mr. Trump’s brand of populism is all about helping the working man.”

“The tech leaders in Mr. Trump’s orbit are pushing for deregulation of their industries and more innovative use of private sector technologies in the federal government, especially the defense industry. About a dozen Musk allies took breaks from their businesses to serve as unofficial advisers to the Trump transition effort.

“Broadly, the group is pushing for less onerous regulation of industries like cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, a weaker Federal Trade Commission to allow for more deal-making and the privatization of some government services to make government more efficient. Mr. Musk himself has called some executives at major public companies and asked how the government is thwarting their business — and what he can do to help.”

“These tech leaders have played a far broader role than simply contributing to the nascent Department of Government Efficiency — the Musk-led effort, abbreviated as DOGE, that is intended to effectively audit the entire government and cut $2 trillion out of federal spending. Mr. Musk’s friends are also influencing hiring decisions at some of the most important government agencies.”

“Inside the Trump transition team’s headquarters in West Palm Beach, Fla., the billionaire Marc Andreessen, a tech investor who decades ago founded one of the first popular internet browsers, has interviewed candidates for senior roles at the State Department, the Pentagon and the Department of Health and Human Services.

“Jared Birchall, the head of Mr. Musk’s family office with no experience in foreign affairs, has interviewed a few candidates for jobs at the State Department. Mr. Birchall has been involved in advising the Trump transition team on space policy and artificial intelligence, helping to put together councils for A.I. development and crypto policy.”

“Shaun Maguire, another Musk friend, is now advising Mr. Trump on picks for the intelligence community. Mr. Maguire, a brash Caltech Ph.D. in physics who is an investor at Sequoia Capital, has been a staple of the Trump transition over the last month, including interviewing potential candidates for senior Defense Department jobs.”

These examples represent just a small slice of Trump’s rich supporters.

“The transition offices have been crawling with executives from defense tech firms with close ties to Mr. Trump’s orbit, such as Palantir, which was co-founded by Peter Thiel, and Anduril, the military technology startup led by Palmer Luckey. Several SpaceX executives have been asking questions about matters that go well beyond space policy, and interrogating federal spending across government agencies, people with direct knowledge of the talks say.”

1 -Trump on tariffs

DeArbea Walker, assistant editor at Forbes, reports on Trump’s proposed tariffs and their effects on consumers (https://forbes.com/sites/dearbeawalker/2024/12/26/how-consumers-can-prepare-for-trumps-new-tariffs).

Walker writes that “A tariff is a tax on imported goods that companies pay to the government when they import products to the U.S….”

“‘That extra cost has to get covered one way or another, either by coming out of the importing company’s margins or by being passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices,’ Forbes contributor Joe Moglia says. ‘If the tariffs are too high, there may be no choice other than raising prices.’

Trump’s tariff proposals

Tariffs on China,, Canada, and Mexico

“Trump has proposed 25% tariffs on all goods coming from Mexico and Canada, to stop the flow of fentanyl and migrants across the U.S. borders.

“During the presidential campaign, Trump said he’d impose at least a 60% tariff on imports from China. After the 2024 election, he said he’d add 10% “above any additional tariffs” on all goods coming from China until they stop fentanyl production.”

“Trump’s rationale for his proposed tariffs includes restoring manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and, some experts say, using tariffs as a trade negotiating tool. In addition to the economic motivations, Trump cites security: He has insisted that Mexico and Canada stem the flow of illegal drugs and migrants over the border.”

Tariffs on EU

“Trump recently threatened nonspecific tariffs against the European Union if the trade bloc didn’t step up U.S. oil and gas imports.”

Effects of tariffs on consumers

“Weekly grocery bills are likely to get more expensive if President-elect Donald Trump follows through in imposing tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada and China. Everything from avocados to garlic will go up.

“That new car you’re eyeing—or even your next grocery run—could cost more after President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20. Trump plans to sign an Executive Order on day one that would impose 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, and threatens additional tariffs on products from China and elsewhere.” He initially claimed that domestic consumer prices would not go up, but later acknowledged they could (https://truthout.org/articles/trump-reneges-on-promise-that-tariffs-wont-raise-costs-for-consumers).

“Tariffs on raw materials like steel or aluminum could send the prices of cellphones and laptops through the roof, according to True Tamplin, a Forbes personal finance contributor. A 10 percent tariff on a $1,000 laptop would add $100 to its prices.”

Walker also refers to a list of goods compiled by Forbes contributor Frank Holmes, that could become more expensive as a result of Trump’s tariffs.

“Groceries, like avocados, tomatoes, garlic, and other produce from Mexico.
Electronics and appliances, including washing machines, laptops, phones and TVs, which are made from imported parts from Canada and China
Clothing, shoes and other everyday goods made abroad
Home improvement supplies like wood, steel and paint
Cars like the Nissan Sentra and Mercedes-Benz GLB are assembled in Mexico.”

In addition, Walker writes, “Industries with lots of exposure to imported goods—retail, electronics and even agriculture—could face significant headwinds.”

Spillover effects

Walker notes, “There’s also the risk of the spillover effect. Retailers importing the goods will increase the price to absorb the cost of the tariff, however, domestic producers, who aren’t impacted by the tariffs, will feel emboldened and may raise their prices too.” This was the case during Trump’s first term when dryers, not subjected to tariffs, rose 12%.

On balance, tariffs are costly for domestic residents and businesses. Mark Williams summarizes this point (https://bu.ed/articles/2024/would-trumps-tariffs-send-prices-soaring).

“Tariffs increase the cost of imported goods, temporarily protecting domestic markets, and they can raise incentives for onshore manufacturing and sales. Short-term, there could be some production gains. However, as Trump proved during the 2018 tariffs on imported steel, they did little to materially increase the number of jobs in US steel plants. Moreover, once tariffs were slapped on China, they quickly retaliated by making many US products more expensive; this eventually led to a reduction in the number of US export jobs.”

Tariffs are not popular among Americans

In a Newsweek magazine article, Suzanne Blake reports that a majority of Americans do not like tariffs, specifically Trump’s proposal (https://newsweek.com/donald-trump-bad-news-tariff-plan-inflation-poll-2001523). Here’s the crux of what she writes.

“A majority of Americans are bracing themselves for President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs, according to a poll that was published on Monday.

“In a WalletHub Fed Rate survey of 200 Americans this month, 74 percent of Americans said Trump’s possible tariffs would likely lead to more inflation down the line as it remains above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target.”

2 – The deportation or detention of all undocumented residents

Trump’s plans for his first day in the White House includes the mass deportation or detention (and eventual deportation) of virtually all eleven plus million undocumented residents. Here are some facts from Pew Research (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us).

“Unauthorized immigrants live in 6.3 million households that include more than 22 million people. These households represent 4.8% of the 130 million U.S. households.

“…some facts about these households in 2022 [the latest available]:
 In 86% of these households, either the householder or their spouse is an unauthorized immigrant.
 Almost 70% of these households are considered “mixed status,” meaning that they also contain lawful immigrants or U.S.-born residents.
 In only about 5% of these households, the unauthorized immigrants are not related to the householder or spouse. In these cases, they are probably employees or roommates.”

“Of the 22 million people in households with an unauthorized immigrant, 11 million are U.S. born or lawful immigrants. They include:
 1.3 million U.S.-born adults who are children of unauthorized immigrants. (We cannot estimate the total number of U.S.-born adult children of unauthorized immigrants because available data sources only identify those who still live with their unauthorized immigrant parents.)
 1.4 million other U.S.-born adults and 3.0 million lawful immigrant adults.”

Clarissa-Jan Lim considers Trump’s plans for day one of his presidency in an article for MSNBC, Dec 27, 2024 (https://msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-day-one-deportations-jan-6-pardons-tariffs-rena185019). Here’s some of what she reports on Trump’s “immigration” plans.

One of Trump’s most extreme campaign promises was to carry out “the largest mass deportation program” in the country’s history beginning on Day 1 of his presidency. It’s unclear how such a such a large-scale operation could be executed, but immigration officials have said it would be a huge logistical and financial effort. Economists have also warned that such a program would cause an “economic disaster” for the U.S., which relies heavily on migrant labor.

“Trump told NBC News in November, Lim notes, that there would be ‘no price tag’ for his mass deportation plans.” That is, Trump insists he will have the government spend as much as it takes to effectuate his mass deportation plans.

Trump wants to end “birthright citizenship”

Lim continues. “In a move that could face a prolonged legal fight, the president-elect has also said that he wants to end birthright citizenship through executive action on his first day to deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. Birthright citizenship is a protection enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, but Trump has said that he would consider changing the Constitution to rescind the rule.” It will take more than Trump’s assumption that he, as president, can change the constitution. Why? Amending the Constitution is a power that lies with Congress, not the president. Trump’s plan would result in children being separated from their parents or, in some cases, ending up in the foster care system, in the care of other family members, or even incarcerated.

Using the military to assist in mass deportation

Nonetheless, Trump seems determined to push ahead on mass deportation, even to use the military in such a massive effort.

Charlie Savage and Michael Gold report on Trump’s plan to use the military to assist in the deportation (https://nytimes.com/2024/12/16/us/politics/trump-military-mass-deportations.html). They report as follows.

“President-elect Donald J. Trump confirmed on Monday that he intended to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military in some form to assist in his plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

“On his social media platform, Truth Social, Mr. Trump responded overnight to a post made earlier this month by Tom Fitton, who runs the conservative group Judicial Watch, and who wrote that Mr. Trump’s administration would ‘declare a national emergency and will use military assets’ to address illegal immigration ‘through a mass deportation program.’”

According to Savage and Gold, “In interviews with The New York Times during the Republican primary campaign, described in an article published in November 2023, Mr. Trump’s top immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, said that military funds would be used to build ‘vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers’ for immigrants as their cases progressed and they waited to be flown to other countries.

“The Homeland Security Department would run the facilities, he [Miller] said.
One major impediment to the vast deportation operation that the Trump team has promised in his second term is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, lacks the space to hold a significantly larger number of detainees than it currently does.”

The Trump team believes that such camps could be built expeditiously and thus enable the government to accelerate deportation process of undocumented people who fight their expulsion from the country. The assumption is that more people would voluntarily accept removal instead of pursuing a long-shot effort to remain in the country if they had to stay locked up in the interim.

“Hard-right members of Congress and staunch supporters of Mr. Trump have expressed broad support for his proposal for mass deportations. Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, chimed in on social media on Monday to back using the military for such an effort, saying Mr. Trump was ‘100% correct.’
Mr. Miller has also talked about invoking a public health emergency power to curtail hearing asylum claims, as the Trump administration did during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Deportation without Congressional action

“Mr. Trump’s team said it had developed a multifaceted plan to significantly increase the number of deportations, which it thought could be accomplished without new legislation from Congress, although it anticipated legal challenges.
Other elements of the team’s plan include bolstering the ranks of ICE officers with law enforcement officials who would be temporarily reassigned from other agencies, and with state National Guardsmen and federal troops activated to enforce the law on domestic soil under the Insurrection Act.

“The team also plans to expand a form of due-process-free expulsions known as expedited removal, which is currently used near the border for recent arrivals, to people living across the interior of the country who cannot prove they have been in the United States for more than two years.

“And the team plans to stop issuing citizenship-affirming documents, like passports and Social Security cards, to infants born on domestic soil to undocumented migrant parents in a bid to end birthright citizenship.

“Mr. Trump has already signaled his intent to follow through on his promises with personnel announcements. He named Mr. Miller as a deputy chief of staff in his administration with influence over domestic policy. And Mr. Trump said he would make Thomas Homan, who ran ICE for the first year and a half of the Trump administration and was an early proponent of separating families to deter migrants, his administration’s ‘border czar.’”

“Mr. Homan told The New York Times in 2023 that he had met with Mr. Trump shortly after the now president-elect announced that he would seek office again. During that meeting, Mr. Homan said, he ‘agreed to come back’ in a second term and would ‘help to organize and run the largest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.’ In response to a question on the problem of separating children from their parents, Homan said parents who lose their immigration cases “are going to have to make a decision what you want to do: You can either take your child with you or leave the child here in the United States with a relative.”
That is, if there is a relative available and one who can afford the responsibility of caring for an additional child or children.

Questions about Trump’s deportation plan

“Asked about the proposal, Sabrina Singh, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon, declined to comment, calling it ‘a hypothetical.’ In general, she added, such a plan would typically undergo ‘a rigorous process’ before being enacted, but she declined to elaborate.”

Critics

Savage and Gold cite immigrant advocates who have assailed Trump’s deportation plan, raising alarms about the potential fallout.

“‘President-elect Trump’s dystopian fantasies should send a chill down everyone’s spine, whether immigrant or native-born,’ said Karen Tumlin, the director of the Justice Action Center, an immigrant advocacy organization. ‘Not only is what he is describing in all likelihood illegal, this move would be the exact opposite of the legacy of service in which my family members were proud to participate.’”

“Robyn Barnard, the senior director of refugee advocacy at Human Rights First, asserted that the consequences would be far-ranging. ‘Families will be torn apart, businesses left without vital employees, and our country will be left to pick up the pieces for years to come,’ she added.

“Congressional Democrats responded with a similar level of incredulity, asserting that such a move was all but certain to violate federal laws preventing the use of the military on American soil.

“‘We’re pursuing whatever we can do to make clear that the Insurrection Act should not permit that use of the military,’ said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, referring to the 1807 law that grants presidents emergency power to use troops on domestic soil to restore order when they decide a situation warrants it. Under that law, ‘if there is no threat to public order of a fundamental, far-reaching kind, it would be illegal,’ he added.”

Separations

Jacob Soboroff, who visited detention sites during Trump’s first presidential term, published his finding in a book titled Separated: Inside an American Tragedy. Here is part of an article reviewing the book on July 7,2020, by Kirkus Reviews (https://kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jacob-soboroff/separated-tragedy).

“Separating migrant minors from their families has been a hallmark of the current administration—and, writes the author, ‘an unparalleled abuse of the human rights of children.’ His narrative begins in June 2018 in Brownsville, Texas, where he toured a former Walmart that had been converted into a ‘shelter’ to house some 1,500 migrant boys, many of them caught with their families trying to enter the U.S. By virtue of the administration’s vaunted ‘zero tolerance’ policy, these children represent what Soboroff calls ‘an avoidable catastrophe.’ His sketches of the detention centers are consistently affecting and haunting. As he noted at the time, ‘this place is called a shelter, but effectively these kids are incarcerated.’ The policy of separation was foreshadowed in Trump’s blustery rhetoric during the 2016 campaign—but more by his lieutenant Stephen Miller, who loudly voiced ‘vitriol for undocumented immigrants.’ It was up to Homeland Security head Kirstjen Nielsen to enact it, even after she was warned that family separations would constitute a violation of the constitutional principle of fair treatment. Miller’s faction won the day, and family separation became policy. Startlingly, when a federal judge ruled against the policy and ordered the government to reunite detained families, Customs and Border Patrol admitted that it had planned to separate ‘more than 26,000 children between May and September 2018’ alone. Naturally, the administration has denied the policy even as, Soboroff notes, the principals involved who remain in the administration are now the very people who are coordinating the government’s bungled response to COVID-19. And even though the policy has theoretically been terminated by executive order, thousands of migrant children are still detained in tent cities and other facilities across the border, in some cases without their families for years.”

Concluding thoughts

Trump wants to transform the US in ways that will give him incomparable presidential power. However, his plans, flawed and undemocratic as they are, will generate opposition as well as support. Who knows which side will prevail. But his ambitions are inherently flawed and, if implemented, likely to cause economic chaos and suffering among large segments of the population. The big question is whether such effects will lead to the buildup of opposition forces strong enough politically to prevent Trump from succeeding in pushing his extreme economic and immigration plans.

The 2024 presidential election, troubling prospects for the country

Bob Sheak, Dec 6, 2024

Trump won despite his poor record

The final vote count gave Trump 77,232,887 votes, or 49.9% of the total votes. Kamala Harris received 74,935,796, or 48.4%. Trump’s 1.5% advantage was lower than recent presidential winners received. Nonetheless, it gave the presidency to Trump, a convicted felon with a long record of indictments. His dismal record in dealing with the Covid pandemic is a not-too-distant example of his ineptness. Helio Fred Garcia writes in his book, The Trump Contagion:

“In December 2021 NPR broadcast a report that Trump supporters were far more likely to die of Covid-10: Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from Covid-19 as those who live in areas that went or now President Biden” (pp. 224-225).

Overall, Trump has accumulated 91 criminal indictments, according to a detailed account in Ali Velshi’s book, The Trump Indictments. Melissa Murray and Andrew Weissman have also compiled this outrageous record in their book, The Trump Indictments. These charges will most likely be vacated or postponed, which would ultimately mean that he may not ever be held accountable for his lawless behavior.

He lies. Washington Post journalist Glenn Kessler and his colleagues identified 30,753 false and misleading statements from Trump during his first presidential term (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years).

He pushed and got lower tax rates for the rich and corporations, while increasing the national debt by over 8 trillion dollars. According to US Budget Watch 2024, the national debt increased by $8.4 trillion during Trumps first presidential term (https://www.crfb.org/papers/trump-and-biden-national-debt).

Inequality rose during the Trump presidential years. Jeffrey Kucik reports on this (https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/535239-how-trump-fueled-economic-inequality-in-america). The article was published on Jan. 1, 2021. Kucik writes:

“It is difficult to select just one issue that defines President Trump’s legacy. There is his tragic mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is his alienation of America’s allies. There are even his wars on science and the rule of law. Any of these disasters would provide a suitable byline for the history books.
But we need to add something equally important to this list: Four years after Trump took office, income inequality continues to grow. And it is growing at a faster rate than during any of the last five administrations.”

Now Trump wants complete power

Trump Is Using “Unitary Executive” Theory in His Bid to Amass Supreme Power

Marjorie Cohn considers this issue in an article published on Dec 3, 2024
(https://truthout.org/articles/trump-is-using-unitary-executive-theory-in-his-bid-to-amass-supreme-power). Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense, and is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.

Here’s some of what she writes.

“Trump is claiming total executive power that would eclipse the legislative “co-equal” branch of government.

“In the weeks since the presidential election, president-elect Donald Trump and his allies have made a series of moves that indicate their intent to dangerously consolidate executive power under the controversial ‘unitary executive’ theory of the Constitution.

“During the presidential campaign, Trump posted a video on Truth Social that referred to his second administration as a ‘unified Reich,’ invoking Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich in Nazi Germany. As president-elect, Trump’s cabinet selections have corroborated his campaign pledge to be a dictator on day one.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority decided to grant Trump absolute immunity while in office. On this, Cohn writes: “With the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s decision granting him absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for his core ‘official’ functions, and the 920-page ‘Project 2025’ right-wing blueprint for an autocratic government, Trump is positioning himself to change the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over all aspects of the executive branch — and thereby becoming a ‘unitary executive.’”

Cohn continues. “Proponents of the unitary executive say that Article II establishes a ‘hierarchical, unified executive department under the direct control of the President’ who ‘alone possesses all of the executive power and … therefore can direct, control, and supervise inferior officers or agencies who seek to exercise discretionary executive power.’”

Cohn points out that “Project 2025, the right wing’s roadmap to an imperial presidency, is anchored in the unitary executive scheme. ‘This radical governing philosophy, which contravenes the traditional separation of powers, vests presidents with almost complete control over the federal bureaucracy, including congressionally designated independent agencies or the DOJ and the FBI….’”

Furthermore, as revealed in Project 2025, “Trump would circumvent Congress by taking complete control of all administrative agencies that protect our health, safety, food, water, climate and labor rights. The Supreme Court ruled in June that a federal agency doesn’t have the last word on protecting these rights. When a statute is ambiguous, an agency must now defer to courts (many of which are staffed by judges appointed by Trump) instead of following interpretations of agency experts.” For example, Project 2025 will reinstitute Schedule F that
“would reclassify 50,000 of the 2 million merit-based civil service employees as political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president with no civil service protections.”

Cohn offers a summary of how Project 2025 could undermine the constitutional checks and balances.
– Curtailing the independence of independent agencies;
– Weaponizing the Department of Justice to serve Trump’s political agenda;
– Replacing civil servants with political supporters;
– Impounding funds Congress has appropriated and using them for other purposes;
– Neutralizing the press and independent media;
– Misapplying the Insurrection Act to suppress protests and deport undocumented immigrants;
– Misusing the recess appointment process to confirm executive branch nominees without Senate approval; and
– Deconstructing the administrative state to help corporations maximize profits.

The creation of a “king” in the White House

Cohn writes: “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law,” and quotes Sonia Sotomayor who wrote in dissent. ‘The court effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding.’ The immunity the court established now ‘lies about like a loaded weapon’ for any president to use for his own political gain or financial interests, with the knowledge that he is inoculated from criminal liability.”

“As a result of Trump v. U.S., Trump’s election victory, and the Justice Department’s policy against prosecuting sitting presidents, Trump’s criminal cases — comprising 91 charges — are evaporating.”

Trump’s appointments to his administration: examples

His appointments emphasize loyalty over competence. Trump wants people in advisory or cabinet positions who will implement his right-wing agenda, basically, in various ways, to support a fossil-fuel energy system, to allow liquified natural gas exports to continue, to open up public lands to private investors, to ignore or deny the climate crisis, to drastically cut spending by the federal government on programs that benefit wide swaths of the population, to cut taxes on the rich and corporations, to begin the deportation of millions of undocumented residents, to impose ill-considered tariffs, especially on China, Canada, and Mexico, and to use the FBI and other executive branch agencies to punish Trump’s critics, viewed as “enemies.”

Consider three

Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense

One of his least defensible picks is Trump’s choice of Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. Jane Mayer has written at length about Hegseth, and how he was forced out of previous leadership positions for financial mismanagement, sexist behavior, and being repeatedly intoxicated on the job (https://newyorker.com/news-desk/pete-hegseths-secret-history). Here’s just two paragraphs from Mayor’s article.

“But Hegseth’s record before becoming a full-time Fox News TV host, in 2017, raises additional questions about his suitability to run the world’s largest and most lethal military force. A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.

“A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the ‘party girls’ and the ‘not party girls.’ In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”

Kash Patel to head the FBI.

Chris Lehmann argues in a Dec. 3, 2024, article that “Kash Patel is Trump’s Scariest Cabinet Appointment Yet (https://thenation.com/article/politics/kash-patel-trump-cabinet). Lehmann identifies Patel as “a deep state conspiracy theorist” who Trump has appointed to head the FBI.

“Patel has…duly minted his battles over control of the deep state into a book, Government Gangsters, which derides the agency he’s now charged with administering as ‘one of the most cunning and powerful arms of the Deep State,’ where rampant corruption has become ‘an existential threat to our republican form of government.’ He has also vowed, should he be entrusted with overseeing the agency’s operations, to shut down its Hoover Building headquarters in Washington on day one, and convert it into ‘a museum of the deep state.’”

Patel complains that the FBI is “overrun with self-protecting raging liberals—another plaint cribbed entirely from the persecution fantasies of Trump. Patel’s own history with the agency dates from his tour at the House Select Committee on Intelligence, where he reportedly penned the ‘Nunes memo,’ which castigated FBI officials for approving a baseless FISA surveillance order on former Trump campaign official Carter Page. That caught the eye of Trump, who appointed Patel to the National Security Council after the GOP lost its House majority in the 2018 midterms, and then promoted him to serve as the NSC’s senior director of the agency’s counterterrorism directorate.”

“…as with Trump himself, the conspiratorial logic behind Patel’s advancement has curdled into additional shocking and dangerous breaches with reality. Patel is a champion of the Trump-aligned QAnon cult and conspiracy theory, announcing in a 2022 podcast appearance that the mythical figure at the center of Q ‘should get credit for all the things he has accomplished.’ He’s also joined Mike Flynn, the former Trump national security adviser, for the Q-promoting ReAwaken America tour. In his role as all-purpose MAGA hustler, Patel has hawked a dietary supplement that supposedly reverses bodily damage wrought by the Covid vaccine, dubbing it ‘a homerun kit to rid your body of the harms of the vax.’”

“Patel’s conspiracy-mongering finds a frequent outlet in his broadsides against the press—an especially troubling penchant for the leader of an agency like the FBI, which has stood stoutly athwart basic civil liberties. ‘We’re going to put in all-American patriots from top to bottom,’ Patel announced in a 2023 appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. ‘We will go out and find the conspirators not just in the government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly—we’ll figure that out.’

What Kash Patel Could Do to the F.B.I.

Garrett M. Graff, a journalist, a historian and the author of “The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War” and “Watergate: A New History,” among other books,
also considers the implications of Trump’s appointment of Kash Patel to head the FBI (https://nytimes.com/2024/12/02/opinion/kash-patel-trump-fbi.html).

“It goes almost without saying that Kash Patel, whom Donald Trump picked over the weekend to lead the F.B.I., is supremely unqualified to direct the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.

“That’s what even those who know Mr. Patel well are saying. ‘He’s absolutely unqualified for this job. He’s untrustworthy,’ his supervisor in the first Trump administration, Charles Kupperman, told The Wall Street Journal. ‘It’s an absolute disgrace to American citizens to even consider an individual of this nature.’ Mr. Kupperman’s view is hardly an outlier. In Mr. Trump’s first term, Bill Barr, then the attorney general, and Gina Haspel, then the C.I.A. director, went to great lengths to prevent Mr. Patel from being installed in senior intelligence and law enforcement roles.”

“Unlike Mr. Patel, who has never been nominated for a Senate-confirmed position, every F.B.I. director in modern times has been vetted and confirmed (often repeatedly) by the Senate to another position first. Three F.B.I. directors were federal judges before being selected. Robert Mueller had been nominated by both Republican and Democratic presidents and confirmed by overwhelmingly bipartisan votes in the Senate; James Comey, Barack Obama’s nominee, had been in front of the Senate twice for confirmation. Mr. Wray had been the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, a role that earned him the department’s highest award for leadership and public service.

“Moreover, the idea of appointing a Trump loyalist like Mr. Patel goes against the fundamental approach all recent presidents have taken, which is that they’ve appointed nonpartisan figures, known for their independence. Directors, in turn, usually go out of their way to demonstrate clear independence from the presidents who appointed them. Bill Clinton’s relationship with his choice, Louis Freeh, was so tested during the Clinton scandals that the two men weren’t even on speaking terms, and Mr. Freeh turned in his White House pass to avoid even the appearance of familiarity with the president. Mr. Comey infamously took it upon himself to excoriate Hillary Clinton publicly over her handling of emails as secretary of state to demonstrate his independence from the Obama administration and Justice Department.

“What this independence illustrates is that the F.B.I. is not, as many MAGA loyalists believe, some liberal bastion of wokeness. No Democrat has ever served as an F.B.I. director. Even Democratic presidents appoint Republican officials to head the bureau, as Mr. Obama and Mr. Clinton did in their presidencies.

“Mr. Trump has been clear in what he is trying to do with a nominee like Mr. Patel: He wants to bend and break the bureau and weaponize it against those he sees as his political enemies and domestic critics. Mr. Patel said last year that he hopes to prosecute journalists.”

“…a Patel directorship of even a few years could cause grave, lasting harm to the institution. One of the key ways a director shapes the bureau is through the promotion of top agents, from section chiefs to unit chiefs to special agents in charge to assistant directors and executive assistant directors. His choices of those leaders would shape the bureau for decades.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to head HHS

Lauren Weber, Lena H. Sun and David Ovalle, Washington Post journalists, assess 10 of RFK Jr.’s “conspiracy theories and false claims” (https://washingtonpost.com/health/2024/11/15/rfk-jr-views-conspiracies-false-claims).

“The ascension of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, to the nation’s top health post has alarmed medical experts, who point to his history of trafficking in conspiracy theories as disqualifying to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

“Kennedy, whom President-elect Donald Trump selected as health secretary on Thursday, will be charged with a massive portfolio overseeing Americans’ insurance, drugs, medical supplies and food if the Senate confirms him.”

“This is troubling. ‘He is one of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in the United States and globally, and he has been at this for 20 years,’ said Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

“Here are 10 false health claims Kennedy has publicly made over the years:
Kennedy has falsely linked vaccines to autism
Kennedy falsely called the coronavirus vaccine the ‘deadliest vaccine ever made’
Kennedy promotes raw milk, stem cells and other controversial or debunked medical treatments
Kennedy argues government employees have an interest in ‘mass poisoning’ the American public
Kennedy has falsely linked antidepressants to mass shootings
Kennedy incorrectly suggests AIDS may not be caused by HIV

“Kennedy, who founded a prominent anti-vaccine group, has repeatedly linked the childhood vaccine schedule to autism — a claim that has been debunked by scientists. Kennedy has falsely blamed autism on thimerosal, a compound safely used as a preservative in vaccines, and decried the number of shots on the childhood vaccination schedule.

Weber and her colleagues continue. “‘I do believe that autism does come from vaccines,’ he [Kennedy] said last summer in an interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters.”

“A 2004 report by the Institute of Medicine concluded there is no link between autism and vaccination. Dozens of studies published in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals have also disproved the notion that the MMR vaccine causes autism.

“Hotez and many other public health experts say they worry that Kennedy, as health secretary, will do irreparable harm to already declining confidence in vaccines.

“Hotez pointed to the fivefold rise in pertussis, or whooping cough, in the past year; the 16 measles outbreaks reported by the CDC so far this year, compared with four in 2023; and the detection of polio in New York in 2022.

“‘So our baseline is a fragile vaccine ecosystem that could be on the brink of collapse,’ Hotez said. ‘I worry that now with this appointment, that could actually happen.’”

“Kennedy promotes raw milk, stem cells and other controversial or debunked medical treatments.”

Consider the reasons why milk is pasteurized.

“Raw milk is unsafe to consume, and the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC have strongly advised against consuming it because it can contain dangerous bacteria, such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria. It can also contain viruses, including the H5N1 bird flu virus that is causing an outbreak in dairy cattle and has sickened at least 46 people in the United States. Unpasteurized milk from infected cows can contain high levels of infectious H5N1 virus.”

“Kennedy argues government employees have an interest in ‘mass poisoning’ the American public.

“‘The agency, the USDA, the FDA have been captured by the industries they’re supposed to regulate, and they all have an interest in subsidies and mass poisoning the American public,’ Kennedy told Fox News in August.

“Kennedy has repeatedly spoken about wanting to eliminate industry interests from the government, but public health experts say it is slander to imply that government employees are purposefully harming Americans.

“That’s just an inflammatory statement that has no basis in reality,” Hotez said. “I’ve worked with the scientists at the [health] agencies, at CDC and FDA, at the National Institutes of Health, and they are the most dedicated civil servants the nation has ever seen.”

Kennedy has also falsely linked mass shootings to antidepressants and video games and asserted that AIDS is not caused by HIV. His views on covid-19 follow his dangerous and untrue claims.

“Kennedy falsely claimed in a July interview last year with Fox News that fewer people would have died of covid-19 if the United States had deployed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Multiple studies have concluded that the antiparasitic and antimalarial drugs are ineffective against covid-19, despite the promotion of the drug by right-wing media.”

Initial responses from the Left to Trump’s election

Calls to action

1 – John Nichols emphasizes Trump’s narrow victory over Harris and that he does not have a mandate (https://thenation.com/article/politics/donald-trump-vote-margin-narrowed). He points out:

“Why make note of all the presidents who ran better than Trump? Why discuss the narrowness of his advantage over Harris? Why consider, in addition, that the Republican majorities in the House and Senate will be among the narrowest in modern American history? Because it puts the 2024 election results in perspective—and, in doing so, gives members of both parties an understanding of how to respond when Trump claims that an unappealing nominee or policy should be accepted out of deference to his “powerful” mandate.

“Trump’s victory was not of ‘epic’ or ‘historic’ proportions. There was no ‘landslide’ for the once and future president, as Fox News suggested repeatedly in postelection headlines. The election did not produce the ‘decisive victory’ for Trump that the Associated Press referred to in the immediate aftermath of the voting. Nor did it yield the “resounding defeat” for Harris that AP reported at the same time.”

Nichols continues.

“We now confront a second Trump presidency.

“There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country.

“We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

“Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance.”

2 – Kamala Harris say we must continue the fight for democracy

In her concession speech, Harris urged her supporters to “continue ‘the fight that fueled this campaign” (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-election-loss-speech-howard-university). The following quote from her speech captures her commitment to continue the fight for America.

“Let me say my heart is full today. My heart is full today, full of gratitude for the trust you have placed in me, full of love for our country, and full of resolve,” Harris said. “The outcome of this election was not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for, but hear me when I say the light of America’s promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting.”

3 – New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg is concerned about what Trump will do with the power of the presidency, but hopes there will be resistance

(https://nytimes.com/2024/11/06/opinion/trump-future-mourn.html).

“Trump’s first election felt like a fluke, a sick accident enabled by Democratic complacency. But this year, the forces of liberal pluralism and basic civic decency poured everything they could into the fight, and they lost not just the Electoral College but also [the popular vote]. The American electorate, knowing exactly who Trump is, chose him. This is, it turns out, who we are.”

“But eventually, mourning either starts to fade or curdles into depression and despair. When and if it does, whatever resistance emerges to the new MAGA will differ from what came before. Gone will be the hope of vindicating the country from Trumpism, of rendering him an aberration. What’s left is the more modest work of trying to ameliorate the suffering his government is going to visit on us.”

“There’s no point in protesting his inauguration, as millions did in 2017. But hopefully we will take to the streets if his forces come into our neighborhoods to drag migrant families away. We will need to strengthen the networks that help women in red states get abortions, especially if Trump’s Justice Department cracks down on the mailing of abortion pills or his F.D.A. withdraws approval of them. In state and local elections, I’ll want to know how candidates promise to protect us from the MAGA movement’s threats to reshape our public health systems and our schools.”

“Ultimately,” Goldberg writes, “Trump’s one redeeming feature is his incompetence. If history is any guide, many of those he brings into government will come to despise him. He will not give people the economic relief they’re craving. If he follows through on his plans for universal tariffs, economists expect higher inflation. Trump’s close ally Elon Musk, dreaming of imposing aggressive austerity on the federal government, has said that Americans will have to endure ‘some temporary hardship.’ We saw, with Covid, how Trump handled a major crisis, and there is not the slightest reason to believe he will perform any better in handling another. I have little doubt that many of those who voted for him will come to regret it.”

“The question, if and when that happens, is how much of our system will still be standing, and whether Trump’s opponents have built an alternative that can restore to people a sense of dignity and optimism. That will be the work of the next four years — saving what we can and trying to imagine a tolerable future. For now, though, all I can do is grieve.”

Others see a grim future for the country

1 – Elie Mystal argues that “Trump is Not a Fluke – He’s America” (https://thenation.com/article/politics/trump-is-america-not-a-fluke). The article was published on Nov. 7.

“America deserves everything it is about to get. We had a chance to stand united against fascism, authoritarianism, racism, and bigotry, but we did not. We had a chance to create a better world for not just ourselves but our sisters and brothers in at least some of the communities most vulnerable to unchecked white rule, but we did not. We had a chance to pass down a better, safer, and cleaner world to our children, but we did not. Instead, we chose Trump, JD Vance….”

“Like I said, Trump is the sum of our failures. A country that allows its environment to be ravaged, its children to be shot, its wealth to be hoarded, its workers to be exploited, its poor to starve, its cops to murder, and its minorities to be hunted doesn’t really deserve to be ‘saved.’ It deserves to fail.
Trump is not our ‘retribution.’ He is our reckoning.”

2 – Peter Baker, New York Times journalist, analyzes how Trump’s threats and language sometimes are linked to a fascist past (https://nytimes.com/2024/10/27/us/politics/trump-fascism.html).

“While presidents have pushed the boundaries of power, and in some cases abused it outright, no American commander in chief over the past couple of centuries has so aggressively sought to discredit the institutions of democracy at home while so openly embracing and envying dictators abroad. Although plenty of presidents have been called dictators by their opponents, none has been publicly accused of fascism by his own handpicked top adviser who spent day after day with him….

“Mr. Trump does not use the word to describe himself — in fact, he uses it to describe his adversaries — but he does not shrink from the impression it leaves. He goes out of his way to portray himself as an American strongman, vowing if re-elected to use the military to crack down on dissent, to use the Justice Department to prosecute and imprison his foes, to shut down news media outlets that displease him, to claim authority that his predecessors did not have and to round up millions of people living in the country illegally and put them in camps or deport them en masse.

“He has already sought to overturn a free and fair election that even his own advisers told him he had lost, all in a bid to hold onto power despite the will of the voters, something no other sitting president ever tried to do. When that did not work, he spread demonstrable lies about the 2020 vote so pervasively that he convinced most of his supporters that Mr. Biden’s victory was illegitimate, according to polls, eroding faith in the democratic system that is key to its enduring viability. He then called for the ‘termination’ of the Constitution so that President Biden could be instantly removed from power and himself reinstalled without a new election.”

“Gen. Mark A. Milley, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, was quoted in Bob Woodward’s new book, ‘War,’ calling Mr. Trump ‘fascist to the core.’ In recent days, 13 other former Trump aides released a letter backing Mr. Kelly’s assessment and warning of the former president’s ‘desire for absolute, unchecked power.’

“Whether intentionally or not, Mr. Trump has fueled concerns about fascism since the day he first descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower to announce his presidential bid in 2015. As he kicked off his campaign that day, he demonized Mexican migrants as rapists and within months he vowed to ban all Muslims from entering the country.

“He fashioned a foreign policy around the themes of isolationism and nationalism. When told by New York Times reporters that it sounded as if he were talking about an ‘America First’ approach, he happily appropriated the term. The fact that it was a term discredited by history because of its association before World War II with isolationists, including some Nazi sympathizers, did not matter to him.

“Nor did he mind citing fascists like Benito Mussolini. When Mr. Trump retweeted a quote that ‘it is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep,’ NBC’s Chuck Todd told him that it was from Mussolini. “I know who said it,” Mr. Trump replied. ‘But what difference does it make whether it’s Mussolini or somebody else?’ He also came to use language familiar to victims of Joseph Stalin when he declared journalists who angered him to be ‘enemies of the people,’ a phrase used to send Russians to the gulag.
“While he was president, Mr. Trump told staff members that “Hitler did a lot of good things.” At another point, he complained to Mr. Kelly, “Why can’t you be like the German generals,” meaning those who reported to Hitler. In interviews with The Times and The Atlantic in recent days, Mr. Kelly confirmed those anecdotes, first reported in several books over the last few years. Mr. Trump denied this past week that he ever said them, and last year he denied ever reading “Mein Kampf.”

“The former president has likewise affiliated himself with the modern world’s autocrats. He has praised some of today’s most authoritarian and, in some cases, murderous leaders, including President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia (‘genius’), President Xi Jinping of China (‘a brilliant man’), Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea (‘very honorable’), President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt (‘my favorite dictator’), Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia (‘a great guy’), former President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines (‘what a great job you are doing’), President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey (‘a hell of a leader’) and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary (‘one of the most respected men’).”

Mr. Trump during his four years in office regularly asserted the most expansive view of presidential power. “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” he once said, referring to the article in the Constitution that deals with executive power, ignoring the limits built into the document.”

“An early sign of the tension came during a meeting when Mr. Trump was pushing the generals to stage a military parade down the streets of Washington, the kind of spectacle not typically seen outside of a moment of wartime victory. General Paul Selva of the Air Force, the vice chair of the Joint Chiefs, objected, explaining that it reminded him of his childhood in Portugal when it was a military dictatorship. “It’s what dictators do,” General Selva told him. Mr. Trump was undeterred and brought up the idea dozens of times again, officers later said.

“The rift grew over time and culminated in Mr. Trump’s final year in office. When some of the protests over Mr. Floyd’s murder turned violent, the president’s first instinct was to use the armed forces. He repeatedly pressed his team to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 so that he could send active-duty military to quell the protests. He wanted 10,000 troops in the streets and the 82nd Airborne Division called up.

“Mr. Trump demanded that General Milley personally take charge, but the Joint Chiefs chairman resisted, saying the National Guard would be sufficient. Mr. Trump shouted at him in a meeting. “You are all losers!” he yelled and then repeated the line with an expletive. Turning to General Milley, he said, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

“Over the past four years, Mr. Trump has escalated his threats to use the power of the presidency to punish his antagonists. He has vowed to prosecute Mr. Biden and other Democrats if he wins the election and threatened prison time for election workers who he deems to have cheated in some way.

“He promoted a social media post saying that former Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, should face a military tribunal for investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He calls Democrats ‘the enemy from within’ and suggested that he would order the National Guard or active-duty military members to round up American citizens who oppose his candidacy.

“He has signaled that he would go after the news media as well. After ‘60 Minutes’ edited an interview with Ms. Harris in a way that Mr. Trump did not like, he said that “CBS should lose its license.” He said similar things this year about NBC, ABC and CNN. While in office, aides have said he pressed them to use government power to punish corporations affiliated with CNN and the owner of The Washington Post, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.”

“He has called for the summary execution of shoplifters and ruminated about unleashing the police to inflict ‘one really violent day’ on criminals or even ‘one rough hour — and I mean real rough’ to bring down the property crime rate.
In a 2021 podcast, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, now Mr. Trump’s running mate, said that if the former president won again he should ‘fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people,’ in effect turning the nonpartisan government work force into a partisan cadre of loyalists.

Concluding thoughts

Nearly half of all voters registered support for Trump and gave the Republicans slim leads in both chambers of the U.S. Congress. They voted for a man and a political party that will try to destroy American democracy, ignore the US Constitution, create a king-like president, and find justifications for their extremist agenda. Trump and his administration are committed to capturing, detaining, and deporting millions of undocumented residents, and, in the process, separating many children from their parents. He will look for ways to compel local officials to go along. He will, as emphatically promised, impose inflation-driving tariffs, and thus increase the costs of goods to American consumers and many businesses. He and his administration will go after their domestic “enemies.” These efforts will likely be supported by a right-wing Supreme Court and many federal courts across the country.

Alternatively:

In his new book, On Freedom, historian Timothy Snyder describes what a real democracy entails.

“A large representative democracy works only when people are in fact represented. Democracy is rule by the people, so nonhuman entities (algorithms, corporations, and foundations) should neither vote nor pay for political campaigns. No American should count for more than any other American. Campaigns should be transparently and publicly financed. Candidates should be publicly financed; voter registration should be automatic; voting stations should be plentiful; ballots should be paper; gerrymandering should be outlawed” (p. 241).

12 Reasons to Vote Against Trump

12 Reasons to vote against Trump

Bob Sheak, Oct 11, 2024

Introduction

This post offers twelve reasons to vote against Trump/Vance in the November presidential election. The reader may think of more reasons. It will take a large vote for Harris/Walz to accomplish this goal and thus end Trump’s dominating influence on the Republican Party and US politics. It is a truly epical fight about democracy vs fascism.

#1 – Cognitive decline

Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman report on Trump’s increasingly angry and rambling speeches (https://nytimes.com/2024/10/06/us/politics/trump-speeches-age-cognitive-decline.html). Peter Baker covered the Trump presidency and wrote a book on it with his wife, Susan Glasser. Dylan Freedman is a machine-learning engineer and a journalist working on A.I. initiatives. Here’s some of what Baker and Freedman consider.

“Former President Donald J. Trump vividly recounted how the audience at his climactic debate with Vice President Kamala Harris was on his side. Except that there was no audience. The debate was held in an empty hall. No one “went crazy,” as Mr. Trump put it, because no one was there.”

“He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own “beautiful” body. He relishes “a great day in Louisiana” after spending the day in Georgia. He expresses fear that North Korea is “trying to kill me” when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.”

Baker and Freedman continue. “With Mr. Biden out, Mr. Trump, at 78, is now the oldest major party nominee for president in history and would be the oldest president ever if he wins and finishes another term at 82. A review of Mr. Trump’s rallies, interviews, statements and social media posts finds signs of change since he first took the political stage in 2015. They point out that Trump “has always been discursive and has often been untethered to truth, but with the passage of time his speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past.

“According to a computer analysis by The New York Times, Mr. Trump’s rally speeches now last an average of 82 minutes, compared with 45 minutes in 2016. Proportionately, he uses 13 percent more all-or-nothing terms like “always” and “never” than he did eight years ago, which some experts consider a sign of advancing age.

“Similarly, he uses 32 percent more negative words than positive words now, compared with 21 percent in 2016, which can be another indicator of cognitive change. And he uses swearwords 69 percent more often than he did when he first ran, a trend that could reflect what experts call disinhibition. (A study by Stat, a health care news outlet, produced similar findings.)

“He cites fictional characters… like Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lip” (he meant “Silence of the Lambs”), asks “where’s Johnny Carson, bring back Johnny” (who died in 2005) and ruminates on how attractive Cary Grant was (“the most handsome man”). He asks supporters whether they remember the landing in New York of Charles Lindbergh, who actually landed in Paris and long before Mr. Trump was born.”

“Sarah Matthews, who was Mr. Trump’s deputy press secretary until breaking with him over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, said the former president had lost his fastball.

“‘I don’t think anyone would ever say that Trump is the most polished speaker, but his more recent speeches do seem to be more incoherent, and he’s rambling even more so and he’s had some pretty noticeable moments of confusion,’ she said.”

Some of Mr. Trump’s cabinet secretaries had a running debate over whether the president was “crazy-crazy,” as one of them put it in an interview after leaving office, or merely someone who promoted “crazy ideas.” There were multiple conversations about whether the 25th Amendment disability clause should be invoked to remove him from office, although the idea never went far. His own estranged niece, Mary L. Trump, a clinical psychologist, wrote a book identifying disorders she believed he has. Mr. Trump bristled at such talk, insisting that he was ‘a very stable genius’.

“Ms. Matthews said of her time in the White House. ‘No one wanted to outright say it in that environment — is he mentally fit? — but I definitely had my moments where I personally questioned it.’

“A 2022 study by a pair of University of Montana scholars found that Mr. Trump’s speech complexity was significantly lower than that of the average president over American history. (So was Mr. Biden’s.) The Times analysis found that Mr. Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level, lower than rivals like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who speaks at an eighth-grade level, which is roughly average for modern presidents.”

There is more. Baker and Freedman write:

“Mr. Trump has appeared tired at times and has maintained a far less active campaign schedule this time around, holding only 61 rallies so far in 2024, compared with 283 through all of 2016, according to the Times analysis, although he has picked up the pace lately. He appeared to nod off during his hush-money trial in New York before being convicted of 34 felonies.”

“Now his rallies are powered as much by anger as anything else. His distortions and false claims have reached new levels. His adversaries are ‘lunatics’ and ‘deranged’ and ‘communists’ and ‘fascists.’ Never particularly restrained, he now lobs four-letter words and other profanities far more freely.”

“But like some people approaching the end of their eighth decade, he is not open to correction. “Trump is never wrong,” he said recently in Wisconsin. ‘I am never, ever wrong.’” And his millions of followers believe him.

#2 – Moral unfitness

The New York Times Editorial Board has offered a summary of Trump’s moral unfitness to be president

(https://nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/11/opinion/editorials/donald-trump-2024-unfit.html).

“He lies blatantly and maliciously, embraces racists, abuses women and has a schoolyard bully’s instinct to target society’s most vulnerable. He has delighted in coarsening and polarizing the town square with ever more divisive and incendiary language. Mr. Trump is a man who craves validation and vindication, so much that he would prefer a hostile leader’s lies to his own intelligence agencies’ truths and would shake down a vulnerable ally for short-term political advantage. His handling of everything from routine affairs to major crises was undermined by his blundering combination of impulsiveness, insecurity and unstudied certainty.

This record shows what can happen to a country led by such a person: America’s image, credibility and cohesion were relentlessly undermined by Mr. Trump during his term.

“None of his wrongful actions are so obviously discrediting as his determined and systematic attempts to undermine the integrity of elections — the most basic element of any democracy — an effort that culminated in an insurrection at the Capitol to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power.

#3 – Law breaker

In a report for Citizens for Ethics (CREW), Brie Sparkman and Sara Wiatrak write that, as of March 2024 [updated June 4], “Donald Trump has been personally charged with 88 [now 91] criminal offenses in four criminal cases” (https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/trumps-91-criminal-charges-and-where-they-stand). They continue:

“This total reflects charges related to Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, election interference in Georgia, falsifying business records in New York, and mishandling classified records after leaving the presidency. Donald Trump is the first former president in U.S. history to be criminally indicted.”

#4 – Opposed to abortion access

On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, ending the right to abortion that had existed since 1973. Nina Totenberg and Sarah McCammon review the new law for NPR (https://npr.org/2022/06/24/1102305878/supreme-court-abortion-roe-v-wade-decision-overturn). Here are excerpts and comments from their analysis.

“The decision, most of which was leaked in early May [2022], means that abortion rights will be rolled back in nearly half of the states immediately, with more restrictions likely to follow. For all practical purposes, abortion will not be available in large swaths of the country. The decision may well mean too that the court itself, as well as the abortion question, will become a focal point in the upcoming fall elections and in the fall and thereafter.”

Concurring with Justice Samuel Alito 78-page decision were Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by the first President Bush, and the three Trump appointees — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by President George W. Bush, concurred in the judgment only, and would have limited the decision to upholding the Mississippi law at issue in the case, which banned abortions after 15 weeks.”

“Dissenting were Justices Stephen Breyer, appointed by President Clinton, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, appointed by President Obama. They agreed that the court decision means that ‘young women today will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers.’ Indeed, they said the court’s opinion means that ‘from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term even at the steepest personal and familial costs.’”

#5 – Building a right-wing and lawless army of militia to advance Trump’s authoritarian agenda

Bob Dreyfuss delves into this issue in an article for The Nation on Sept 5, 2024

(https://thenation.com/article/society/donald-trump-squadristi-nazies). Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor, is an independent investigative journalist who specializes in politics and national security.

Dreyfuss writes: “Trump, of course, has a long history of supporting and encouraging potentially violent supporters. In 2016, during his first campaign, he suggested that ‘the Second Amendment people’—i.e., his gun-owning backers—might be able to stop the nomination of Democratic Supreme Court choices. In 2019, he said, ‘I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.’ And in 2020 Trump famously told the Proud Boys militia to ‘stand down and stand by.’ Ultimately, the Proud Boys would help lead the January 6 insurrection.”

There is a pattern. Dreyfuss reports, “Certainly, Trump has summoned US militias and other extremists to his cause. In 2020, for instance, at the height of nationwide protests against lockdowns, mask requirements, and school closures at the start of the coronavirus crisis, Trump issued a series of viral tweets urging his followers to ‘liberate’ Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia, where armed adherents were mobilizing in street demonstrations. For instance, on April 17, 2020, Trump tweeted—characteristically, in all caps—’LIBERATE MICHIGAN!’ Soon afterwards, gun-toting Trump supporters invaded the state capitol in Lansing. Most egregiously, he called on supporters to gather in Washington on January 5-6, 2021—’Be there, will be wild’—for a rally that ended in the occupation of the Capitol and led to Trump’s impeachment.”

Trump has an armed and cult-like following that seems prepared to take up arms on his behalf. This is in a context in which the nation is bitterly divided “in which a substantial portion of the populace believes that violence may be necessary.

“According to a survey by the University of Chicago’s Project on Security & Threats, as many as 14 percent of Americans say that violence is justified to ‘achieve political goals that I support,’ and 4.4 percent—that’s more than 11 million US adults—agree that ‘the use of force is justified to return Donald Trump to the presidency.’”

#6 -Trump’s January 6 Culpability

Brett Wilkins reports on a new case for Trump’s culpability on January 6

(https://commondreams.org/articles/bombshell-new-motion-lays-out-legal-case-for-trumps-culpability-on-january-6).

“Jack Smith, the special counsel probing former U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential contest, on Wednesday [Oct 2] presented a massive trove of fresh evidence supporting his election interference case against the 2024 Republican nominee.

“Smith’s sprawling and highly anticipated 165-page motion — which was partly unsealed Wednesday by presiding U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — states that Trump ‘asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it entailed official conduct. Not so.’

“Trump — who in August 2023 was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights — contends that his actions were taken in his official capacity as president and not as a private individual.

“Bottom of Form

In July, the U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing justice— including three Trump appointees — ruled that the ex-president is entitled to ‘absolute immunity’ for ‘official acts’ taken while he was in office, raising questions about the future of this case. According to Smith’s motion:

“Although the defendant was the incumbent president during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one. Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted—a function in which the defendant, as president, had no official role.

“In Trump v. United States… the Supreme Court held that presidents are immune from prosecution for certain official conduct—including the defendant’s use of the Justice Department in furtherance of his scheme, as was alleged in the original indictment—and remanded to this court to determine whether the remaining allegations against the defendant are immunized.

“The answer to that question is no. This motion provides a comprehensive account of the defendant’s private criminal conduct; sets forth the legal framework created by Trump for resolving immunity claims; applies that framework to establish that none of the defendant’s charged conduct is immunized because it either was unofficial or any presumptive immunity is rebutted; and requests the relief the government seeks, which is, at bottom, this: that the court determine that the defendant must stand trial for his private crimes as would any other citizen.

Smith’s filing details what Trump told various people in his inner circle, including then-Vice President Mike Pence, his now-disgraced and twice-disbarred lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and leading White House and Republican Party figures — some of whose names remain undisclosed.”

Smith’s motion states:

“When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office. With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (the “targeted states”). His efforts included lying to state officials in order to induce them to ignore true vote counts; manufacturing fraudulent electoral votes in the targeted states; attempting to enlist Pence, in his role as president of the Senate, to obstruct Congress’ certification of the election by using the defendant’s fraudulent electoral votes; and when all else had failed, on January 6, 2021, directing an angry crowd of supporters to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification.”

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and co-chair of the Not Above the Law Coalition praises Smith’s efforts says “Jack Smith has shown us yet again the merits of his case against former President Trump.”

“In his filing, Smith clarifies that the alleged criminal actions occurred while Trump was acting as a private citizen,” Gilbert added. “The desperate plan that Trump embarked on to try and overturn the results of a legitimate election was reprehensible, irresponsible, and — the document shows — criminal. Accountability to the American people and our democracy is our only path forward.”

#7– Encourages violence among his supporters

Sasha Abramsky reports on the fascist calls to violence by Trump and his supporters in an article on The Nation, Oct 4, 2024

https://thenation.com/article/politics/trump-maga-fascist-violence

“Late last week, in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump, who has long fetishized what he sees as strongman behavior and language, took another leaf out of the Duterte and Bolsonaro playbooks. Specifically, he aped both authoritarians in their approach to crime and punishment.”

“Trump, in Erie, called for shoplifters to face ‘one really violent day’ and ‘one rough hour’ at the hands of the police, arguing that it was Democratic policy to coddle offenders, and that taking the gloves off in the fight against street crime was the only way to render communities safe again. In a rambling speech notable both for its utter lack of syntax and its extraordinary embrace of illegal violence by state and federal agents, Trump declared ruefully: ‘They’re [police officers] not allowed to do it, because the liberal left won’t let them do it. If you had one real, rough, nasty day with the drug stores as an example.… she [Harris] created something in San Francisco, $950 you’re allowed to steal; anything above that you will be prosecuted. Originally you saw kids walking with calculators, standing there with calculators adding it up. If you had one really violent day, put Congressman Mike Kelly [a local GOP representative who was attending the rally] in charge for one day. Mike, would you say, if you’re in charge, ‘Don’t touch them, let them rob your stores’?… it’s a chain of events, it’s so bad. One rough hour, and I mean real rough, the word will get out and it will end immediately, end immediately, it will end immediately.’”

Abramsky continues.

“The violent sentiments underpinning Trump’s word-salad sentences were in and of themselves appalling—as appalling as his reported desire during his time in the White House to let Border Patrol agents shoot undocumented immigrants in the legs as a form of deterrence. Equally disgusting was the reaction of his crowd. At each turn of phrase, at each homage to violence, the crowd roared its approval.

“There’s been a lot of talk recently about ‘understanding’ the Trump voter, about not tarring them all with their leader’s fetid brush. Good luck on that front. For, based on that particular interaction between cult leader and cult followers in Pennsylvania, I’d say a significant portion of them, at least the ones who think it a worthy investment of time and energy to attend a Trump rally, are now reveling in out-and-out fascist calls to violence. They’re supporting Trump not despite his propensity to devolve into ugly calls for clearly illegal acts of violence but because of it. And, in these rallies, they are provided the cover of numbers to give their worst, most vicious impulses free rein. That’s the emotional timbre of the lynch mob.”

Since the end of his presidency, Trump has “sought to invoke the Insurrection Act against racial justice protesters; and he described police violence as a ‘beautiful thing to watch.’ And while his 2016–20 presidency did see some criminal justice reform legislation signed into law, since then Trump has leaned into tough-on-crime policies: he has pledged to dramatically expand the use of the death penalty, to introduce summary executions for drug dealers, and Project 2025, which his campaign is closely tied to, has promised to pull back on federal probes into police violence against suspects. He has also repeatedly stated that he will use the Department of Justice to prosecute his political opponents, elections workers, and even members of the media.”

#8- A long record of ignoring the law

Abramsky also addresses this issue. “If the GOP and the MAGA movement were even remotely concerned with true crime fighting, they wouldn’t have nominated a man convicted of 34 felonies—not for stealing a few hundred dollars’ worth of drugstore items but for illegally paying off a porn star to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep quiet about her affair with Donald J. Trump. They would not have nominated a man whose business enterprises have been found to have committed fraud and who boasts about his fine-tuned ability to avoid paying taxes. They would not have nominated a man found liable for sexual abuse, fined millions of dollars for defaming the victim of that sexual abuse, and caught on tape bragging about his ability to grab and grope the private parts of any woman he wants. They would not have nominated a man twice impeached, once for holding up aid to Ukraine in hopes of strong-arming that country’s government into dishing up political dirt on Joe Biden, the other time for inciting an armed uprising aimed at preventing the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election. They would not have nominated a man facing dozens of additional state and federal felony charges for everything from hoarding top-secret documents through to trying to bully state officials in swing states into changing the election tallies to benefit Donald Trump.”

#9 – Trump suggests there will be violence if he loses the November Election and seems to welcome the thought

C. J. Polychroniou, a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. points to relevant information (https://commondreams.org/opinion/implications-2024-election-us). The article was published on August 24, 2024.

“The 2024 U.S. presidential election is enormously important for many of the reasons you cited, although we shouldn’t be oblivious of the fact that parochialism is what drives most American voters. That said, this election is indeed unlike any other in modern history also because American voters are so polarized that the threat of civil breakdown is real. In fact, I believe that Trump is already laying the groundwork for rejecting the election result if he loses. This is why he calls Democrats’ replacement of Biden a ‘coup’ and even ‘a violent overthrow’ of a president. And back in March, he said that there will be a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses the November election.

#10 – Dismisses the threat of global warming

Tob Engelhardt considers how Trump’s policies would intensify global warming in an article for Tom Dispatch, Sept 26 2024

(https://tomdispatch.com/in-a-lost-universe-with-you-know-who).

“After all, right now, in September 2024, we’re living on a planet that has never, not at any time in human history, been hotter. Our world has, in fact, been setting remarkable heat records, one after another, month after month — August was the 15th straight month to be the hottest of its kind ever — year after year. In fact, 2023 set a global heat record and 2024 has a 95% probability of smashing that record. And the weather of such an overheating planet should already be taking your breath away, even if we’re still early (more or less) in a process that could indeed create nothing less than a genuine hell on Earth.

“All the greenhouse gases that have been and are being sent into the planet’s atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels are creating ever more heat, about 90% of which is at present being absorbed by global waters and is already altering our world in stunning ways. Recently, for instance, there has been devastating climate-change-related flooding globally, whether you’re talking about parts of China, Nigeria, or most recently central Europe that suddenly found themselves underwater (while, by the way, Portugal was burning with more than 100 fires). The droughts have similarly been horrific, while the fires — oh, yes, those fires! — have been beyond fierce, including the recent blazes in Southern California and the 1.9 million (yes, 1.9 million!) acres scorched in Oregon’s record summer fire season. And don’t forget those Canadian fires of 2023 and 2024 that set such grim records in a world where “nearly 12 million hectares [of forests] — an area roughly the size of Nicaragua — burned in 2023, topping the previous record by about 24%.”

“And the heat? …. This year, records have been smashed again (and again) across the American West — and significant other parts of the planet.”

“In fact, to be fair to The Donald, while Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did indeed take some significant steps toward greening this country, mainly through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), during their time in office, the U.S. has remained the leader globally in producing oil and natural gas. In 2023, for the sixth year in a row, it set an all-time global record for oil production and another for natural gas exports. And don’t forget about methane, a truly potent greenhouse gas, where the American record is equally grim.

“Still, the man who demanded a billion dollars in campaign contributions from a group of leading oil executives and lobbyists at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago last spring, while promising to reverse Biden administration environmental rules and regulations, has, as Kamala Harris reminded us in their debate, repeatedly dismissed the phenomenon as a ‘hoax.’ Worse yet, it’s obvious that, should he enter the White House again, Trump and his compatriots are planning to let the fossil-fuel companies run wild and wreak havoc. He also plans to do his damnedest to limit the production of electric cars (despite the backing of Elon Musk) — ‘I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day 1’ — and so much else to ensure that we live on what, barring some remarkable surprise in the decades to come, will be a planet from… yes, hell.

“And oh yes, that Heritage Foundation plan, Project 2025, that he claims he hasn’t read (and it’s true that, as far as we know, he doesn’t read much, other perhaps than Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf or the collection of that monster’s speeches, which he once reportedly kept near his bed). Still, Project 2025, created by so many people connected to his first term in office, already promises, according to the Guardian‘s Oliver Milman, “a widespread evisceration of environmental protections, allowing for a glut of new oil and gas drilling, the repeal of the IRA and even the elimination of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service so they can be replaced by private companies. The conservative Heritage Foundation, which leads Project 2025, has said a new Trump administration should ‘eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.’”

“The estimate is that if Project 2025’s authors have their way, the result will be an added 2.7 billion tons of carbon emissions by 2030 and 26 billion tons (no, that is not a misprint!) by 2050. A cheery prospect for sure on a planet already heating in a historic (or do I mean post-historic?) fashion.”

“We’re talking, of course, about the man who generally summarizes his stance on energy and this planet in a simple phrase: ‘Drill, baby, drill”’— sometimes adding ‘and drill now!’ Honestly, you couldn’t be blunter than that, could you, when it comes to the fate of our world?”

#11 – Trump’s Politicization of Hurricane Helene Is Scandalous, Even for Him

Ed Kilgore reports on Trump’s politicization of Hurricane Helene in an article on New York Magazine, Oct 7,2024 (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-politicization-of-hurricane-helene-is-scandalous.html).

Trump has been alleging without evidence of a highly incompetent and even indifferent Biden administration response. “As CNN reports, it’s mostly a pack of demonstrably fabricated lies:

“Though the Biden administration’s response had certainly received criticism, it had also been praised by various state and local leaders — including the Republican governors of some of the affected states and the Democratic governor of North Carolina, plus local leaders including the Democratic mayor of the hard-hit North Carolina city of Asheville.

“For example, Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said at a Tuesday press conference that federal assistance had ‘been superb,’ noting that Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had both called and told him to let them know whatever the state needed. McMaster also said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell had called…. The FAA is coordinating closely with state and local officials to make sure everyone is operating safely in very crowded and congested airspace.”

Kilgore refers to NBC News reports:

“False claims that federal emergency disaster money was given to migrants in the U.S. illegally have spread quickly in recent days, boosted by former President Donald Trump and some of his most high-profile supporters. Trump repeated one of the more extreme baseless allegations during a rally Thursday in Saginaw, Michigan, saying that the money had been stolen.

More lies. Trump also said, “They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.”

Combine all the false claims Team Trump is promoting right now “and they tell a tall tale of worthless deep-state bureaucrats (whom Trump wants to replace with loyalists once he’s back in office) politically persecuting his suffering followers (just like the Biden administration persecuted him via ‘lawfare’), as they pursue their horrifically anti-American project of drowning the country and its voters in a sea of violent pet-eating migrants deeper than any flood waters. Needless to say this campaign of slander offers Helene victims nothing other than another grievance and makes an ongoing tragedy just another chapter in the saga of Trump’s earth-scorching return to power.”

#12 – Trump would add twice as much to national debt as Harris

Jacob Bogage, who covers economic policy in Congress for The Washington Post, reports on a study documenting that Trump’s agenda would add to national debt (https://washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/07/harris-trump-national-debt).

“Trump’s campaign proposals would increase the ballooning national debt by $7.5 trillion; Harris’s would add $3.5 trillion, according to a nonpartisan think tank.”

“Trump has called for extending his 2017 tax cuts, which would add more than $5 trillion over 10 years to the United States’ $35.7 trillion national debt, according to a study from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB). His plan to end taxes on overtime wages, Social Security benefits and tips would add another $3.6 trillion in debt. And his call for a nationwide campaign to detain and deport undocumented immigrants would cost $350 billion.

“Trump says major new tariffs on imports would bring in enough revenue to offset all the tax cuts, but the study doesn’t support that claim, and many economists say the tariffs would also drive prices up for U.S. consumers.

“All told, CRFB found that the Trump policies it studied would add $7.5 trillion of debt — more than twice as much as the Harris proposals the group scrutinized.

“Harris would add $3 trillion to the debt by extending the 2017 tax cuts for those earning less than $400,000 a year, and $1.35 trillion through a major expansion of the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit, according to the study. Harris’s campaign says those programs would cost far less.

“Major portions of Trump’s 2017 tax cut expire in 2025, and without new legislation, individual tax rates will increase sharply. Congress’s nonpartisan bookkeeper projects the nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio, a key metric of financial health, will reach a new all-time high within the next decade, imperiling financial stability. And Social Security and Medicare will also be insolvent by 2035 and 2036, respectively, forcing mandatory benefits cuts by those dates without congressional action.

“If we don’t take this seriously, it sort of becomes like bankruptcy, which happens very slowly and then suddenly, all at once,” said Jason Fichtner, chief economist at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank. “What that means for individuals, households, consumers, investors, borrowers, is that they will see the value of the dollar decline. They’ll probably see interest rates go up and they will see inflation go up, as well. Does that mean an apocalypse and there’s nothing to buy anymore? No. It means things become more expensive and we have a hard time funding the things you want to pay for now, like roads, bridges and education.”

“Both candidates do have plans to raise some federal revenue: The tariffs Trump has proposed would reach as high as 20 percent on all $3 trillion of annual imports, which could bring in $2.7 trillion in revenue, according to CRFB.

“But, by some of his own economic advisers’ analysis, the tariffs could also dramatically increase prices and depress U.S. economic output, because producers often pass on the cost of import duties to consumers. Lower economic output might also mean lower tax revenue.

“‘Tariffs are just a tax, no question about it,’ Stephen Moore, an economist at the right-wing Heritage Foundation and a Trump economic adviser, told policymakers at an event hosted by Politico this spring. “I don’t always agree on everything with Donald Trump. He knows I don’t agree with the monetary policy. A tariff is just a consumption tax.”

“Trump would also dramatically expand domestic energy production and recoup funding from some of President Joe Biden’s climate investments, worth up to $700 billion. And Trump has pledged to end the Department of Education at a savings of $200 billion, though much of that money would probably have to be reprogrammed into state education grants.”

“Harris has said she would pay for each of her policy proposals, and under one budget model CRFB studied, her plans would not raise the debt at all.”

“Under the most realistic scenario CRFB studied, Harris would raise $900 billion in revenue by increasing the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent, plus another $900 billion from additional tax revenue. Much of that would be generated from new funding for the IRS to investigate tax cheats.

“Harris has not yet proposed new tax rates for those earning more than $400,000, but less than roughly $600,000. Rates for that tax bracket would be worked out in negotiations with Congress, she has said. Rates for the wealthiest earners would be set at 39.6 percent, according to Harris’s plan.

“The vice president would also increase tax rates on capital income, including on gains, dividends and corporate stock buybacks, for $850 billion in revenue, and allow Medicare to more aggressively negotiate prescription drug prices, worth $250 billion in debt reduction.”

Concluding thoughts

Trump’s presidential candidacy poses an existential threat to American democracy and to the wellbeing of the great majority of Americans. As discussed in this post, there are reasons to take the threat Trump poses seriously. The only way to stop him and his allies is to vote for Harris/Walz and other Democrats. The hope is that such votes would not only give the Democrats the advantage in the popular vote but also enough electoral college votes to certify their win. The hope then is that a Harris-led administration would continue the economic policies that have reduced inflation, raised wages, and created millions of jobs and address the problem with more determination than heretofore.

Democrats have momentum, but there are challenges

Bob Sheak, Oct 4, 2024

The odds that Kamala Harris will defeat Trump in November have improved, but there are challenges. In this post, I refer to the polls, Harris’ policies, the debates, trends that favor Harris/Walz, Trump’s anti-democratic agenda, and concerns about the Electoral College.

I -The polls

Andrew Howard reports on the polls and how Harris and Trump are deadlocked in every battleground state (https://politico.com/news/20124/10/02/harris-trump-polls-00182150). Here’s some of what he writes.

“Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump remain neck and neck in all seven battleground states, according to new polls released Wednesday.

“The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter’s Swing State Project surveys, conducted by a bipartisan team of pollsters, shows Harris between 1 and 3 points ahead in five of the states, easily within the margin of error. In a sixth state, North Carolina, Harris and Trump were exactly tied.

“Harris leads Trump in Michigan by 3 percentage points, and she also leads by 1 or 2 points in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“Trump is leading by 2 percentage points head-to-head in Georgia.

“In each of the states, the result is statistically unchanged since the last iteration of the survey in mid-August.”

“While Harris is virtually tied with Trump, Democrats running in other key statewide races have more significant leads across the map.

Senate races

“In Senate races, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego leads his GOP opponent Kari Lake in Arizona, 54 percent to 41 percent; in Michigan, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin leads former Rep. Mike Rogers, 50 percent to 46 percent; Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen leads Republican Sam Brown in Nevada, 53 percent to 40 percent; Democratic Sen. Bob Casey leads Republican Dave McCormick, 52 percent to 45 percent, in Pennsylvania; and Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin holds a 2-point lead over GOP nominee Eric Hovde in Wisconsin.

“And in the North Carolina gubernatorial race, Josh Stein leads Mark Robinson, whose vulgar comments on a porn website were reported last month, 59 percent to 35 percent.

II. Harris’ policies

April Rubin offers a summary of the proposals (https://axios.com/2024/09/06/kamala-harris-policy-proposals-economy-abortion-immigration).

————————————–

Some of the major proposals Harris has announced or backed, across policy areas:

Economy

First-time homebuyers could receive a $25,000 tax credit as a shortage of available homes keeps prices high under an economic plan Harris outlined in August.

Harris also pitched tax breaks for homebuyers who build starter homes and those who rehabilitate older housing stock.

Capital gains tax of 28% could affect wealthy Americans, a pitch more than 10 points lower than what Biden has proposed.

This marked a move to the center,Axios’ Hans Nichols reported.

A small business tax credit could expand tenfold from $5,000 to $50,000.

She proposed reducing barriers to getting occupational licenses across state lines with a goal of 25 million new small business applications in her first term.

A ban on grocery price gouging could mirror existing state laws, although Harris hasn’t provided details on this policy.

38 states prohibit companies from increasing prices during emergencies.

On child tax credits, new parentscould receive $6,000 during the first year of their child’slife.

The earned income tax credit would expand for lower-income adults who aren’t raising kids.

Taxes on tips could be eliminated, in a rare policy position where Harris copied what Trump has promised service and hospitality workers.

Such a policy could incentivize workers to push harder for more tips, Axios’ Emily Peck reported.

Health

Abortion and reproductive care have been central to Harris’ campaign.

She said she would sign a law to restore Roe v. Wade, which protected federal abortion access, though incompletely as women across the U.S. faced barriers to accessing abortion and states could still enact strict bans.

The campaign kicked off a 50-stop bus tour focused on reproductive rights, zeroed in on battleground states. It started in Florida on Tuesday.

Programming at the Democratic National Convention in August reflected a frank approach to discussion abortion rights by platforming women who shared how bans impacted them, Axios’ Ivana Saric reported.

Out-of-pocket drug costs would cap at $2,000 per year for everyone and insulin copays at $35 per month.

Immigration

New security measures at the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico would be funded under a bipartisan border proposal that Harris said she’d support.

Trump, earlier this year, successfully urged congressional allies to oppose the bill.

Her stance on the border and immigration has flip-flopped from previously held, more liberal policy positions, Axios’ Alex Thompson and Hans Nichols reported.

Migrants would largely be barredfrom seeking asylum under the bipartisan proposal, CNN reported.

Energy

Fracking could survive under a Harris presidency.

She said last month in her first formal interview with CNN as the nomineethat she wouldn’t ban fracking, a reversal from a position she held during her first presidential run.

Reality check: A fracking bill would take an act of Congress that is unlikely anytime soon, Axios’ Ben Geman reported.

Foreign policy

Harris called for a hostage and ceasefire deal during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July. While her tone has been perceived as more critical of Israel than Biden, she’s been playing a similar balancing act.

Harris said during her DNC keynote speech weeks later that said she would “always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself.” She said she and Biden were working to secure a deal and protect Palestinians’ “right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.” [But the US continues to provide Israel with the weapons it needs to continue the attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.]

The pro-Palestinian activists, including the Uncommitted National Movement, have protested at the DNC and at her campaign rallies.

—————————————

III – The debates

#1 – Harris vs. Trump

Kamala bested Trump in their debate, as reported widely after the debate. For example, NPR’s Domenico Montanaro reports that it wasn’t even close (https://npr.org/2024/09/11/g-s1-22023/debate-harris-trump-takeaways).

Here are 3 takeaways reported by Montanaro.

(1) This debate wasn’t close.

“Harris was far more dominant than Trump, from beginning to end. She called him ‘weak and wrong,’ inverting the political cliché that ‘strong and wrong’ beats ‘weak and right.’ Harris answered questions, then redirected and baited him on a host of issues.

“She got under Trump’s skin — something he usually tries to do — by saying that people at his rallies leave ‘early out of exhaustion and boredom,’ painting him as out of touch and a bad businessman for inheriting $400 million ‘on a silver platter and then filed for bankruptcy six times,’ and chiding him for being ‘fired by 81 million people’ in the 2020 election and now being ‘confused’ about losing.

“Harris addressed policy, including tax breaks for small businesses and parents and touting her idea for a first-time home-buyer credit for down payments. She repeatedly said, ‘I have a plan,’ while Trump was left saying, ‘I have concepts of a plan’ when it comes to replacing the Affordable Care Act.”

“Trump made the unusual move for a presidential candidate to go into the spin room after the debate and talk to reporters. That’s not something that’s normally done when someone has a good debate. That’s usually reserved for low-polling primary candidates, who felt they didn’t get enough time or attention during the debate.”

(2) The spotlight should now be on Trump’s incoherence and general lack of any serious grasp on policy.

“With a more-than-competent performance from Harris Tuesday, Trump’s lies, meandering, conspiracies and often general incoherence was made even more glaring.

“He wandered through conspiracies about, not just the election, but also about who is currently president (Joe Biden), the usual about immigrants who (aren’t actually) coming from “mental institutions and insane asylums” and the newly unusual (and debunked) about immigrants who (are not) “eating the dogs” or “cats.”

(3) Trump was on the defensive and evasive, even on issues that should benefit him — and didn’t land much, if anything, that stuck.

“Harris had Trump on the defensive from the get-go on the economy (about his tax cuts and tariffs), his jobs record, his handling of the pandemic and Jan. 6. There were times, even on immigration, when Trump decided to address a Harris attack instead of talking about the issue he ostensibly wants to talk most about.”

“He declined to say if he wanted Ukraine to win against Russia, wouldn’t answer if he had any regrets about his response to the violence on Jan. 6, and he twice refused to say if he would veto a national abortion ban, like his vice-presidential running mate said he would.

In fact, he went out of his way to say essentially that Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance doesn’t speak for him — in a clumsy and meandering way that led him to student loans.”

“Never mind that Republicans in Congress would not act to help relieve student loans or that Republican-led states sued to end Biden’s executive action on student-loan forgiveness. But Trump was digging the hole even deeper for himself on abortion rights.

“‘I did a great service in doing it,’ Trump said about the overturning of Roe. ‘It took courage to do it. And the Supreme Court had great courage in doing it. And I give tremendous credit to those six justices.’

“Nearly two-thirds have said they opposed the overturning of Roe.”

Montanaro concludes as follows. “Could this debate have changed some minds? Maybe. But views of Trump have been ingrained. This race is very much a coin flip, according to the polls, and that’s unlikely to change very much even after this debate, because of how hyper-polarized this country is.”

#2- Walz vs Vance

John Nichols, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, offers some insights (https://thenation.com/article/politics/walz-vance-vice-presidential-debate-reality).

Republican vice-presidential candidate Senator JD Vance and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz participated in a debate at the CBS Broadcast Center on October 1, 2024, in New York City.

Nichols writes: “JD Vance began his assault against reality with his response to the first question in what will probably be the only vice-presidential debate of the 2024 campaign. When asked whether he would support a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran, the senator from Ohio blamed the Democratic administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for the violence in the Middle East and the rest of the world. Then, he announced that, during his running mate’s one term as president, ‘Donald Trump actually delivered stability in the world.’ Trump, Vance claimed, ‘consistently made the world more secure.’”

“That was a jaw-dropping pronouncement about a scandal-plagued former president who cozied up to dictators, cheered on the spread of right-wing extremism across Europe, and supported vile attacks on refugees at home and abroad.”

Nichols continues. “

Overall, Walz proved up to the task of fact-checking Vance. He responded deftly to that claim from Vance that Trump had ‘delivered stability in the world’ by saying, ‘Look, our allies understand that Donald Trump is fickle. He will go to whoever has the most flattery or where it makes sense to him.’ Walz had already highlighted the damage done to America’s credibility ‘when our allies see Donald Trump turn towards Vladimir Putin, turn towards North Korea, when we start to see that type of fickleness about holding the coalitions together.’ And he told viewers, ‘It’s those that were closest to Donald Trump that understand how dangerous he is when the world is this dangerous. His chief of staff John Kelly said that he was the most flawed human being he ever met, and both of his secretaries of defense and his national security advisers said he should be nowhere near the White House.’

“Walz delivered the facts, pointing out that when Trump was in office he could have worked with ‘a coalition of nations that had boxed Iran’s nuclear program.’ Instead, Walz explained, ‘Donald Trump pulled that program and put nothing else in its place. So Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon they were before because of Donald Trump’s fickle leadership.’”

Nichols refers to the controversy over Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Vance made the false claim that Haitian immigrants were stealing the pets of their neighbors in Springfield and eating them. On this issue, “Walz delivered a stinging critique of the lies Trump and Vance have told about Haitian immigrants who are legally in Springfield and who are credited by honest Republicans, such as Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, with having revitalized the community. The Democrat rightly accused Vance of seeking to ‘dehumanize and villainize other human beings.’”

There were other issues discussed, “with exchanges highlighting Vance’s extreme stances on reproductive rights, healthcare, childcare, and a host of other issues, including the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy—but it finally returned to immigration. When Vance repeated the wild claim that Harris is responsible for chaos at the nation’s southern border, the Democrat clarified that border crossings have, in recent months, been down compared to when Trump left office.”

IV – Some good news for Harris and Democrats

#1 – Overall, workers are better off now than they were under Trump

Dean Baker, the co-founder and the senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and the author of several books, presents evidence that US workers are much better off today than they were during Trump’s presidency (https://commondreams.org/opinion/workers-better-off-under-biden).

This may well benefit Harris and Walz in November.

Baker writes: “First and foremost, workers are better off today because they overwhelmingly have jobs if they want them. They also are getting higher pay, even after adjusting for inflation. And they tell us they are much more satisfied at their jobs.

“When President Biden took office, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent. It is currently 4.3 percent. For most of his presidency the unemployment rate has been below 4.0 percent, a stretch of low unemployment not seen in more than half a century.”

Baker points out that “wages for workers in the bottom ten percent of the wage distribution increased by 13.4 percent from before the pandemic, after adjusting for inflation.” Workers in the middle saw average increases of 3.0 percent after inflation. He notes that 3% is not great, but it’s better than it has been over the prior four decades, “when wages were often stagnate or falling.”

A tight labor market favors workers, giving many of them a choice of jobs. Under such circumstances, they often have the option of leaving jobs “where the pay is low, the workplace is unsafe, or the boss is a jerk.” Thus, in 2021-2023, workers switched jobs in record numbers: “Tens of millions of people quit their jobs and moved on to better ones. One result was that workers reported the highest rate of job satisfaction on record. This is a big deal, since most workers spend a large share of their waking hours on the job.”

Job growth slowed in the late three months of the Trump administration, with a paltry rate of increase of just 140,000.

“The Biden administration’s recovery package got back these jobs in less than a year and a half. The rapid job growth has continued so that we now have 6.4 million more jobs than we did before the pandemic. With the economy still growing at a good clip and inflation back to its pre-pandemic pace, for workers the future is bright.”

#2 – Trump is losing his advantage among voters on the economy

Abha Bhattarai, the economics correspondent for The Washington Post, also reports on evidence that “Trump is losing his edge on the economy among voters” (https://washingtonpost.com/business/2024/09/25/economy-election-harris-trump-polls). Here’s some of what she writes.

“Although voters still favor former president Donald Trump over Harris on handling the economy, his advantage has dropped dramatically in recent weeks. Trump now averages a six-percentage-point edge on the economy, compared with a 12-point lead against President Joe Biden earlier this year, according to an analysis of five polls that measured voters’ opinions before and after Biden dropped out.

“A Fox News poll this month, for example, found that 51 percent of registered voters favor Trump on the economy, compared with 46 percent who favor Harris. That’s compared with a 15-point advantage Trump had over Biden in March. Other recent polls — by ABC-Ipsos, NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist, USA Today-Suffolk University and Quinnipiac University — show similar shifts.

“‘Voters are beginning to give [Harris] the benefit of the doubt — and that’s really significant,’ said Frank Luntz, a longtime GOP pollster. ‘Affordability is a top issue for voters, but Trump has failed to hold Harris to account or to tie her to Biden’s inflation failures.’”

“Underlying that sea change, analysts say, is the fact that Americans are feeling better about the economy. Prices are stabilizing, interest rates are coming down and wages are rising faster than inflation. At the same time, voters seem to view Harris as a clean slate, unburdened by the rapid run-up in prices that has plagued Biden for much of his presidency.” It also helps that prices have stabilized and Harris is focusing on issues important to middle-class voters, including affordable health care, housing and childcare.

“The shift in economic polling coincides with Americans’ improving views on the economy. Consumer sentiment, at its highest level in four months, has risen 40 percent from its low in June 2022, according to a closely watched survey from the University of Michigan. The latest figures show that Americans are feeling better about inflation, as well as the economy and their own finances. Researchers also noted that ‘a growing share of both Republicans and Democrats now anticipate a Harris win.’”

Trump’s proposed tax cuts and spending proposals “would add $5.8 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade — roughly five times the $1.2 trillion Harris’s plans would cost in the same period, according to estimates from the Penn Wharton Budget Model.”

“More than 400 economists and former U.S. policymakers endorsed Harris for president in an open letter this week, calling her ‘a strong steward of the U.S. economy.’ Meanwhile, they said Trump’s proposals ‘risk reigniting inflation and threaten the United States’ global standing and domestic economic stability.’”

Harris and the Democrats have advantages going into the November elections. The Harris/Walz domestic policy agenda is strong. They are raising funds to support their efforts. They have organizations aimed at getting out the vote in all states. And Harris and Walz are conducting an energetic campaign across the country.

V – Trump’s Republican Party

While the Trump/Republican priorities, especially as contained in the 900+page Project 2025, are extreme and anti-democratic, there are tens of millions of cult-like Trump supporters, along with support from rich and powerful people and organizations, who will go along with whatever Trump wants, that is, an authoritarian/fascist presidency and executive branch with Trump as the dominating leader. He and his party will continue their attempts to suppress the votes of opponents. In Georgia, Republican election officials have mandated that all votes must be hand counted, thus delaying the results for weeks or more.

Trump is for maximizing the development and use of fossil fuels, with no regard for the increasingly destructive climate effects. He says he will order massive deportations and detentions of millions of undocumented residents and build walls on the southern border to keep most of them from entering the US, despite international asylum laws and despite the dire economic consequences of potentially losing workers who contribute to local economies and pay taxes. He will support the imposition of high tariffs, regardless of their inflationary effects. He will support tax cuts for the rich and corporations and drive-up inequality. He will likely support a national abortion ban or something like it. He is for work requirements for those who get government benefits (e.g., for disability). He will support the continuation of the Electoral College. Chris Walker finds that two-thirds of Americans back ending the Electoral College (https://truthout.org/articles/nearly-two-thirds-of-americans-back-ending-the-electoral-college). It is a dystopian vision. As president, Trump will likely withdraw the country from NATO, and will support authoritarian governments.

Consider two examples of the extreme and anti-democratic implications of Trump’s and Republican following and agenda.

#1 – A cult-like following

Dana Milbank, opinion columnist for The Washington Post, considers “why Trump supporters will believe absolutely anything” Trump says (https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/12/trump-jesus-mandela-lincoln). Milbank develops his argument in a book, “The Destructionists: The 25-Year Crackup of the Republican Party.”

Trump presents himself as a great leader, perhaps one of the greatest in all of human history. Milbank reports, for example, that in April of 2024 Trump “’styled himself ‘a Modern Day Nelson Mandela.’” Of course, this is absurd but an example of Trump’s “pathological narcissism.” (See the book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President”).

His tens of millions of die-hard followers have been unquestioning in their adherence to Trump’s claims. Milbank refers to a Post-Schar School poll showing just how deep this pathological adherence runs.

“As The Post’s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, and pollsters Scott Clement and Emily Guskin report, Trump’s supporters have become substantially more persuaded by disinformation than they were six years ago. They are more likely to say today that the 2016 election was marred by millions of fraudulent votes and that Russia did not interfere in that election — both demonstrably untrue. A majority of strong Trump supporters today believe his provably false assertions that Joe Biden won the 2020 election because of fraud, that the United States funds most of NATO’s budget and that global temperatures are rising because of natural, not human, causes. While only 28 percent of Americans believe Trump’s false claims on average, those who list Fox News as a primary news source are 13 percentage points more likely to accept the disinformation as true.”

#2 – Violence against opponents is acceptable

Thom Hartmann, a talk-show host and the author of more than 25 books,” analyzes how “Trump Has Delivered Unto Us a Nation of Fascist Bullies” (https://commondreams.org/opinion/trump-fascist-bully).

“Brownshirts, Blackshirts, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, you name it; they’re all mostly made up of men deeply insecure about their own masculinity or role in the world who find safety and meaning by joining the über-bully’s gang.”

Hartmann continues.

“To some extent the groundwork for this bullying was laid by a group of rightwing billionaires who believed they could keep their own taxes low by bullying politicians and voters who wanted ‘nice things’ for average Americans like a national healthcare system.

“They funded astroturf groups like the Tea Party to harass ‘socialist’ Democrats inclined to vote for President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, even though it was a massive giveaway to the insurance industry that was first written by the Heritage Foundation and put into place in Massachusetts by then-Governor Mitt Romney.

“These, in turn, inspired other groups more closely aligned to the Klan — America’s first national bully group — to show up in the streets with torches and swastikas chanting, ‘Jews will not replace us’ as they murdered a young counter-protestor, Heather Heyer.

“And that, of course, led to the murder of three police officers and the death of five others — and the near death of our democratic republican form of government — at the hands of Trump’s mob on January 6th.

“America is today suffering from a surfeit of bullying. It drained many of us of our hope and optimism, much as it did in the 1950s when Joe McCarthy last led a national bullying campaign. It was causing people to check out of the political process, to essentially give up like an abused spouse, or to retreat into sports, music, and hours of binge-watched TV dramas.

“America, in other words, has been suffering for nine long years from being tortured by an unrepentant bully and the ‘tough guys’ who attached themselves to him.”

“If we don’t take on bullies — particularly fascist bullies — they keep going further and further until either they win or you fight back and defeat them.”

“That’s because bullies never stop, unless they are stopped by somebody stronger than them. And, most importantly, every time they win they set their sights on the next conquest. Giving in to their demands only creates a newer and more elaborate set of demands. Responding to their bullying with anything other than a literal, verbal, or metaphorical punch in the face is a waste of time.”

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Concluding thoughts

With just a month away from the election, polls indicate that Harris and Trump are virtually tied in crucial swing states. Republicans are doing their best to reduce Democratic turnout, while Democrats under Harris are doing the opposite, namely, to encourage voting. Indeed, Harris says, as president, she will govern for all Americans. Unfortunately, the outcome will not be determined by the popular vote in most states, but rather by the winner-take-all Electoral College. Sarah Pruitt describes how Electoral College Electors are chosen

(https://history.com/news/electors-chosen-electoral-college).

“There are 538 total electors, including one for each U.S. senator and representative and three electors representing the District of Columbia, and presidential candidates need a majority of 270 votes to win the White House. Most of the time—but not always—the winner of the Electoral College is also the winner of the popular vote.” For example, Trump won the Electoral College in 2016 but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million.

The Democrats have a chance to win both the popular vote and the Electoral College. However, Trump and the Republicans will try to create chaos, delay the vote and challenge outcomes they don’t like. They did not succeed in 2020, but they won’t give up.

Then there are unexpected events. Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas began walking picket lines early Tuesday, Oct. 1, in a strike over wages and automation that could reignite inflation and cause shortages of goods if it goes on more than a few weeks. It’s not clear yet which political party will gain or lose from the strike. But it is another wildcard variable that opens up opportunities for Trump to stoke fears on the legitimacy of the election. There are at least two other wildcards. How many votes will Democrats lose because of the Biden administration’ support of Israel’s war on Palestinians or because of Harris’s support for fracking.

Trump preps his base for a repeat of Jan. 6

Bob Sheak

Sept 14, 2024

Trump continues to argue falsely, as he did in the recent debate with Kamala Harris on Sept 10, 2024, that he won the 2020 presidential election over Biden and did so by millions of uncounted votes, the largest margin ever, he deceitfully says. He also claims that he had no responsibility for the violent and destructive attacks on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2023, a claim that is likewise contradicted by the evidence. His views on the 2020 presidential election are often referred to as “the big lie.” And they are a significant part of Trump’s anti-democratic campaign platform this year.

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The Sept 10, 2024, Debate

Trump’s ongoing assertion that he won the 2020 presidential election

Eric Tucker reports for the Associated Press on how in the debate with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris Trump persisted “in saying he won the 2020 election and he’s taking no responsibility for what unfolded at the Capital on Jan. 6, 2020,” as his supporters stormed the building to block the peaceful transfer of power (https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/trump-repeats-false-claims-2020-election-loss-deflects-113575338).

Tucker writes: “The comments Tuesday night underscored the Republican’s refusal, even four years later, to accept the reality of his defeat and his unwillingness to admit the extent to which his falsehoods about his election loss emboldened the mob that rushed the Capitol, resulting in violent clashes with law enforcement. Trump’s grievances about that election are,” Tucker writes, “central to his 2024 campaign against Democrat Kamala Harris, as he professes allegiance to the rioters.”

Trump maintains that he had “every right” to interfere in 2020 election

Steve Benen addresses this issue in an article for MSNBC, Sept 3, 2024

(https://msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-claims-every-right-to-interfere-2020-election-rcna169323). Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

Benen writes: “About a year after Donald Trump was initially indicted over his efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, special counsel Jack Smith and his team decided it was time for a new superseding indictment related to the same underlying crimes. The move was apparently necessary as a result of a scandalous U.S. Supreme Court ruling that, to a radical degree, elevated the American presidency above the law.”

“Days later,” Benen writes, “Trump blustered ‘that he had every right’ to interfere with the 2020 election, even as two criminal cases involving those allegations hang over him. On Monday, Kamala Harris’ campaign charged that the comments were evidence that Trump believed he was ‘above the law.’

Believes he is above the law

Benen offers the following summary. “Everything Donald Trump has promised on the campaign trail — from ‘terminating’ the Constitution, to imprisoning his political opponents and promising to rule as a dictator on ‘day one’ — makes it clear that he believes he is above the law. Now, Trump is claiming he had ‘every right’ to interfere in the 2020 election.” His public statements substantiate all this.

Trump asserts that he had ‘every right’ to interfere in a presidential election, just days after he was indicted for allegedly trying to interfere in a presidential election, the former president’s rhetoric looked a bit like an ill-timed admission.” Trump has much to admit.

“For example, Benen reports, “Trump admitted that he fired James Comey as the director of the FBI in the hopes of derailing an investigation against him. He confessed that he deliberately misled his own country about the severity of the coronavirus threat. He made provocative comments about his role in the Stormy Daniels hush money scandal. More recently, the GOP candidate made his lawyers’ life more difficult with comments about taking classified documents to his glorified country club.”

Trump falsely says he won the 2020 presidential race.

Eric Tucker has evidence that indicates otherwise. He writes: “In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, and there was no widespread fraud, as election officials across the country, including Trump’s then-attorney general, William Barr, have confirmed. Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, crucial to Biden’s victory, vouched for the integrity of the elections in their states. Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies were dismissed by judges, including two tossed by the Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-nominated justices.

“An Associated Press review of every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by Trump found fewer than 475. Biden took Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 electoral votes by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots cast for president. The disputed ballots represent just 0.15% of his victory margin in those states.”

Trump has no regrets about Jan. 6 insurrection

Tucker’s sources indicate otherwise. “In the ABC debate, Trump was asked twice if he regretted anything he did on Jan. 6, when he told his supporters to march to the Capitol and exhorted them to ‘fight like hell.’ On the Philadelphia stage, Trump first responded by complaining that the questioner had failed to note that he had encouraged the crowd to behave ‘peacefully and patriotically.’

Trump’s incendiary language

“But,” Tucker points out, “he ignored other incendiary language he used throughout the speech…during which he urged the crowd to march to the Capitol, where Congress was meeting to certify Biden’s victory. Trump told the crowd: ‘If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.’ That’s after his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, declared: ‘Let’s have trial by combat.’”

Trump delayed calling for rioters to stop

The implication is that Trump had the power to stop the attacks on the Capitol.

“Trump didn’t appeal for the rioters to leave the Capitol until more than three hours after the assault began.” Trump attempts to deflect attention away from his actions. In the debate, Trump “repeated an oft-stated false claim that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., ‘rejected” his offer to send “10,000 National Guard or soldiers’ to the Capitol. Pelosi does not direct the National Guard. As the Capitol came under attack, she and then-Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. called for military assistance, including from the National Guard.” But had no authority to do this and there was no initial response.

Trump praised the rioters

Tucker – “He then [after three hours of mayhem] released a video telling the rioters it was time to ‘go home,’ but added: ‘We love you. You’re very special people.’”

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Trump’s present campaign running on “pure contempt”

Chris Lehmann argues this point in an article on The Nation, Aug 28 2024

(https://thenation.com/article/politics/trump-arlington-cemetary-scandal). Chris Lehmann is the DC Bureau chief for The Nation and a contributing editor at The Baffler and is the author, most recently, of The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream (Melville House, 2016).

“Tuesday’s political news cycle [August 27, 2024] delivered a crash course in the fundamental outlook of the Trumpified Republican Party, via a pair of stories conveying the deep, reflexive contempt that Donald Trump has helped spread throughout the party’s upper reaches. This contempt extends not merely to the GOP’s political rivals but also to basic humanity and decency.”

Here are the two examples.

#1 – Trump violates rules governing Arlington National Cemetery

Lehmann reports, “The Trump story came from a report by NPR’s Quil Lawrence and Tom Bowman about an ugly and cynical photo-op the Trump campaign staged at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday. Trump and his handlers had barged into Section 60 of the cemetery grounds, where recent war fatalities are laid to rest, in order to photograph the candidate at the gravesites of 13 soldiers killed during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The event culminated in a typically tasteless and inapposite shot of Trump giving a smiling thumbs-up at the site—not exactly a study in somber, statesmanlike mourning.

“But, as Lawrence and Bowman reported, the photo-op was not merely an exercise in bad taste. Trump and his entourage had callously violated the cemetery’s strictures against using the graves of soldiers as a political backdrop, along with its policy against having anyone other than Arlington staff members take official photos there. And Trump staffers had profanely insulted the cemetery official trying to prevent the photo-op from happening, with some sort of altercation ensuing. ‘Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign,” the cemetery said in a statement to NPR. ‘Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants.’ The statement also confirmed that ‘there was an incident, and a report was filed.’

#2 – Trump’s bizarre vice-presidential choice

JD on childless women

On Tuesday, the Harris campaign posted a recording of a 2021 Vance speech to the Christian Virtue leadership forum. In it, Vance launches into still another detour into his bizarre natalist obsession with childless women. Where he’d elsewhere dismissed people without kids as free riders on the sociobiological social contract—lacking enough ‘skin in the game’ to be entrusted with serious grown-up responsibility—here he lays into the subgroup of childless women teachers.

Lehmann quotes Vance. “‘Our conservative idea is that a parent and a family should determine what ideas children learn and are brought up with,” Vance begins, citing a long-standing talking point in right-wing efforts to undermine public education and single-parent, dual-earner, and otherwise nontraditional families. He then supplies an example: ‘So many leaders of the left, and I hate to get so personal about this’ Vance says (spoiler alert: Vance, in fact, does not hate to get personal), ‘but they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children. And that really disorients me and that really disturbs me. Randi Weingarten is the head of one of the most powerful teachers’ unions in the country. She doesn’t have a single child. If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone.’”

The disturbing point. “Bottom of FormIt’s also worth stressing,” Lehmann writes, “that the logic of Vance’s remarks show that he’s not opposed to ‘brainwashing’ America’s children on principle; instead, he favors letting right-wing parents do the relevant indoctrination.”

Vance accepts the extremist Republican 2025 document

“Vance candidly aired his reasoning in a podcast interview recorded just days ahead of his appearance at the Christian Virtue leadership forum. There he called for the right’s ideological seizure of the civil service, declaring, ‘We need a de-Ba’athification program in the U.S.… We should seize the administrative state for our own purposes. We should fire…every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our own people.’ In other words, Vance’s real grudge against Weingarten isn’t that she’s warping the minds of children; it’s that she’s not warping their minds in the way he prescribes—and the way that he wants all public servants to emulate on pain of ideological dismissal. It’s the same crass and instrumentalist vision that the Trump campaign has of dead soldiers—as designated movement props, rather than human beings with moral agency of their own. And just as Trump reportedly views dead soldiers as ‘suckers and losers,’ so does Vance regard education, and governance more broadly, as a rigid process of developing kids into ideological ventriloquist dummies for the natalist right. disqualifications for both members of the GOP presidential ticket. But in today’s hopelessly deranged political discourse, it was just another Tuesday.”

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The majority of Americans believe that if re-elected Trump will move on his authoritarian/fascist threats

Chris Walker reports Aug 30, 2024 on a poll that finds two-thirds of Americans think Trump won’t accept 2024 election outcome (https://truthout.org/articles/poll-two-thirds-of-americans-think-trump-wont-accept-2024-election-outcome).

Walker based his reporting on The ABC News/Ipsos poll, which asked respondents to predict “whether the two major candidates for president would themselves be accepting of the outcome — 68 percent said the Democratic candidate for president and current Vice President Kamala Harris would accept the results, while only 29 percent said they believe Trump would. Two-thirds of respondents (67 percent) said they believe Trump won’t be prepared to accept the outcome.”

“The poll further asked if voters are confident that the upcoming election will be counted accurately, finding that just 65 percent believe the outcome will be correct, while 34 percent stated that they lack confidence in what the final results will be. Those numbers represent the highest rate of skepticism that the election will be counted accurately since the poll started asking the question in 2004.”

Walker continues. “Indeed, 21 percent of Trump supporters (accounting for 8 percent of voters overall) say they are not prepared to accept the 2024 election results.”

“The poll suggests that, should Trump legitimately lose the 2024 presidential race to Harris, a large portion of voters, close to 1 in 12 casting a ballot, will not accept the outcome.”

Much like he did in 2020, Walker sees how Trump is laying the groundwork to dispute the 2024 presidential election. At the same time, “Trump has not provided any sound or rational basis for why the election should be viewed skeptically, repeating many of the same debunked talking points he peddled to his supporters nearly four years ago when he lost to President Joe Biden.”

Walker adds: “During the Republican National Convention this summer, Trump continued to claim that the previous election was ‘rigged’ against him — a statement that has no basis in truth whatsoever.” Then after weeks of peddling this lie, “Trump held a rally in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021. There, he encouraged his enraged supporters to go to the Capitol directly, to protest in person as Congress was certifying Trump’s Electoral College loss to Biden. Before sending them off,’ and that they couldn’t ‘take back our country with weakness.’”

Thousands of Trump followers went on to storm the Capitol grounds, violently entering the building and disrupting the proceedings inside. “Dozens of Capitol Police and other law enforcement were injured by Trump’s mob of loyalists. At least seven individuals died in connection to that day’s events.”

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Building a right-wing army of militia to destroy US democracy

Bob Dreyfuss delves into this issue in an article for The Nation on Sept 5, 2024

Dreyfuss considers whether there are parallels between “…the Nazi Brownshirts, called the Sturmabteilung (SA), or Storm Division… first, established by Hitler as a kind of bodyguard formation to protect Hitler’s speeches in beer halls. It drew its recruits from a pool of German rightists called the Freikorps (Free Corps), a 400,000-strong, ultra-violent paramilitary militia that engaged in mass killing of socialists and communists in the immediate aftermath of World War I.”

Are the militias and Trump’s followers who believe in the power of insurrection a growing American SA? The evidence says they are. Dreyfuss gives the following examples.

“During and after Trump’s presidency, gun-toting protesters occupied several state capitols, organized militias at the US-Mexican border to combat what Trump called an ‘invasion,’ mobilized militia-like formations to engage in street fights with antifa and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that followed the murder of George Floyd, and created self-defined protection units to defend business owners who opposed pandemic-imposed lockdowns and closures.”

The U.S. has encumbered by a wild west gun culture. Dreyfuss gives these additional examples.

“The armed occupation of the Michigan state capitol in 2020 was carried out by the Michigan Liberty Militia, the Michigan Proud Boys, and others, carrying semiautomatic assault rifles (Two men arrested in that action were later charged in a plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.) Only 13 states have elected to regulate or restrict open carrying of weapons, making it difficult or impossible to prevent armed demonstrators from intimidating opponents. Similar armed rallies, focused on militant opposition to Covid-19 restrictions, were also held inside statehouses in Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Wisconsin, and armed demonstrations erupted in the streets of Salt Lake City, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Dallas, according to a compilation by Everytown for Gun Safety. And in January 2020, the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL), a militant pro-gun group, led a massive, armed march and rally in Richmond, Virginia, to protest gun safety legislation, in concert with militias and the boogaloo movement. “We welcome our militia brothers and sisters,” said the VCDL. According to the Everytown report, “Militia groups descended on Richmond [and] organized a conference the day before, titled ‘The State of the Militia’ at which various militia leaders spoke, including those who had helped plan the [Unite the Right] event in Charlottesville.”

The US militia movement survives, as it consolidates its membership at the local and regional levels, while ‘still engaged in equipping their followers in tactical gear and training in the woods,’ Travis McAdam, senior researcher for the SPLC, told The Nation. The SPLC currently tracks 51 organized militias, part of what it describes as ‘more than 1,500 hard-right extremist groups operating across the country.’” Additionally, there are recent attempts “to create a national militia under the name National American Patriot and Liberty Militia (NAPALM) and its parallel name, the National Constitutional Militia. It’s being organized by Jake Lang, currently in jail on charges of assaulting law enforcement officers with a baseball bat on January 6, along with a host of extremists and white nationalists.”

It is also worrisome “that conservative elected officials, sheriffs, and Republican Party offices are tacitly, and sometimes even explicitly, cooperating with, encouraging and supporting militia groups. The membrane that has long separated the state and local governments from nongovernmental and private ultra-right actors, including violence-prone ones, is becoming increasingly porous.”

Dreyfuss continues. “‘It would be foolish to underestimate the power of Trump’s comments to call rogue militias to action,’ wrote Mary McCord, in essay for Lawfare five years ago. ‘The militia movement has shown that it will take action based on the president’s statements.’” Dreyfuss quotes McCord. ‘If he doesn’t win, he’s been planting the seeds of a false narrative that people with AR-15s are listening to,’ she says. ‘A lot of what happens is up to Trump and what words he uses, and to what extent does he call people to engage in violence.’”

McCord also points out

‘that despite the Second Amendment, which refers to a “well-regulated militia,’ militias and militia-like organizations are illegal in all 50 states. In the landmark 2008 Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the court supported the most conservative interpretation of the Second Amendment and gun ownership, Justice Antonin Scalia also wrote that that amendment ‘does not prevent the prohibition of private paramilitary groups.’ Yet, says McCord, laws against militias are never enforced, partly because local officials misinterpret the law, partly because militias thinly disguise their activities, and partly because many local law enforcement agencies are broadly sympathetic.” The NRA is also a powerful right-wing force against gun restrictions of any kind.

Back to Dreyfuss: “Not surprisingly, in 2024 the NRA has given Trump its endorsement. Of course, after a decade of controversy, financial troubles, and high-profile lawsuits against it, the NRA has lost a significant about of its clout. Still, the organization, once topping 6 million members, can still boast of 4.2 million, and will spend millions of dollars in the 2024 election. On February 9, Trump appeared at the NRA’s Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, telling the crowd, ‘They are coming to get your guns,’ and announcing the creation of Gun Owners for Trump. And on May 18, Trump traveled to the NRA’s annual convention in Dallas, Texas, where he predicted ‘death and destruction like never before’ if he isn’t elected in November.”

Concluding thoughts

There is still little doubt that Trump dominates the Republican Party, enjoys the support of a large number of the rich and powerful organizations, and has a loyal, cult-like base of tens of millions of grassroots supporters, along with a multifaceted militia movement and other supporters who are well armed. The country may be able to avoid authoritarianism/fascism if the Democrats can rally voters for Kamala Harris and Jim Walz and not be defeated by the Electoral College or the Republican efforts to reduce opportunities for Democratic voters.

Suggested further reading

David Neiwert, The Age of Insurrection: The Radical Right’s Assault on American Democracy (2023)

John Rennie Short, Insurrection: What the January 6 Assault on the Capitol Reveals about America and Democracy (2024)

Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church (2023)

Steve Benen, Ministry of Truth

Democracy, Realty, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past (2024)